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A new player in the quality Mono cartridge game

For awhile there, if you wanted a mono cart to get the most out your new mono Beatles collection, other mono reissues, or vintage mono LPs, there were the budget offerings from Grado, a big price gap, and then the more expensive good stuff. The elliptical mono Grado goes for around $150.

But now the Audio Technica AT MONO3/LP, a HOMC, is available in the US. The link goes to the official importer, LpGear, who prices this $299.99 cart at $189.99. However, I also found that this cart is available from Amazon for $112.65. Worried that the unofficial import puts your purchase at risk? For a mere $12 extra you can buy a 2-year protection warranty.

I ordered mine via Amazon Prime on Sat. Oct. 24 and it arrived today.

This thing is NICE! 1.2mV output, which is plenty, conical stylus (don't know if it's nude or not, but it *sounds* nude), tracking force range 1.5-2.5g. I'm breaking mine in at around 2g.

Even fresh out of the box, this cart's a revelation. I started with "Within You Without You" from the new Beatles Mono vinyl reissue. It's really something when you play a mono record with a cartridge that produces no signal in the vertical plane. The noise floor drops down to the indiscernible. In fact, even cueing the needle makes very little sound thru the speakers.

Everything on Sgt. Pepper's sounded richer, lusher, more distinct, more dynamic, with great treble extension and no hint of sibilance. I followed it with Analogue Productions' 3-LP 45 rpm remaster of Nat King Cole's "After Midnight." Fan-TASTIC! I thought Nat was in the room before, but the dynamics, transparency, and truth-in-timbre reached a height I hadn't heard on my rig up to now.

I finished my mini-audition with a *real* mono record, an original mono Columbia Masterworks pressing of "Grand Canyon Suite" performed by Eugene Ormandy and The Phily Phil. Again, smoother, quieter, more dynamics. It showed its age a little bit, but I think I could bring this 55-yr-old record close to the reissues with a steam cleaning. Even without it it was very satisfying.

Folks, if you have nothing but the new Beatles mono reissues and have an easy way to switch cartridges or set up a mono rig, this cart is so worth it.

Right now I have around 13 Beatles mono LPs, two Beach Boys reissues, the Nat King Cole, some old Columbia Masterworks and shaded dog Orthophonics, mono reissues of Prestige and Miles Davis LPs, and some mono pressings of '60s pop.

I'm thinking of separating all my mono vinyl into its own shelf so--when I mount the AT Mono3 LP--I don't have to sort through my entire collection to play the compatible LPs.

BTW, if you decide to go after this cartridge, make sure you get the AT MONO3/LP cartridge, which is for mono LPS, and *NOT* the AT MONO3/SP cartridge, which is for 78s.
johnnyb53
lewm
13,223 posts
 
Johnny, You may be correct in your interpretation of the use of the word "strapped". The thought occurred to me as well. (Did you read Art Dudley's comments on how three different mono cartridges are constructed?) Do you KNOW that what you say about the Ortofon Quintet is true, or are you conjecturing? If you have some evidence to support your contention, can you cite it, please? The fact is that the more one investigates this subject, the more one uncovers obfuscation on the part of the cartridge makers. And very few reviewers, e.g., only Fremer and Dudley so far, pay any attention to this question.
johnnyb53 OP
3,510 posts
 
Lewm, the full paragraph on the Ortofon website that you excerpted says:

Quintet Mono uses a strapped output to deliver the same output signal from both sets of pole pins. This effectively eliminates the need for mono-specific equipment, making it possible to enjoy true mono reproduction on any stereo playback system.
In that context it looks pretty clear that the cartridge is only reading the horizontal cut and then strapping it to both outputs so it'll play nicely centered mono on a stereo pair of speakers.

Secondly, in June 2014, Michael Fremer published an online article about the Ortofon 2M Mono SE that was being developed to honor EMI's new Beatles Mono LP collection coming out later that year. In the comments section, a reader asked just how "mono" this and other Ortofon mono cartridges are. Fremer said he'd ask Ortofon about it. True to his word, further down in the comments he replies:

Here is what designer Leif Johannsen writes about the Ortofon lineup: SPU CG: The old 1948-design with only lateral compliance and one coil SPU Mono, Cadenza Mono, Quintet Mono: Both lateral and vertical compliance and one coil. The armature has been turned 45 degrees from the stereo-position. 2M Mono and 2M Mono SE: In the MM we cannot turn the armature or anything else. So the mechanical geometry is the same as in the stereo 2M’s. But we can couple the two coils in a clever way (NOT simply parallel between L and R)) and thereby making it work as one coil. The point is to have a design not sensitive to vertical movements and that has been achieved.
Also, note that the Dudley column you referenced was written more than ten years ago. There is a lot more mono activity going on now than there was then. We now have mono reissues of the Beach Boys, Beatles, Prestige and Riverside jazz labels, etc.

The market has expanded and so hast the number of mono cartridge models and mfrs, which makes the task of sorting out their topologies more challenging.

And if you look at the Dudley article, he notes that the Grado wood cartridge is potted, and therefore difficult to determine the inner workings. He suspected that Grado's suppression of vertical signal wasn't as strong as that of the other two cartridges. But when he played it, it was as noise-free as the others.

Circuit and mechanical design is a means to an end. What's important is the end result. How things are strapped isn't as important as how it tracks and sounds.
lewm
13,223 posts
 
There's nothing in the paragraph you quote from Ortofon that settles the issue of how the Quintet, in particular, is constructed. I did read Fremer's review of the 2M Mono SE, and it's a top candidate for me; I agree it seems to have been designed to eliminate as much as possible signal induced by vertical modulation. Finally, my recollection is that, using a test LP, Dudley determined that the Grado produced more "noise" resulting from vertical modulation than did the other 2 of the 3 mono cartridges under test. He then speculated that perhaps it was less adherent to true mono construction than the others. However, when he listened to the Grado on mono LPs, it more than held its own for reproduction of actual music, as compared to the other two. Perhaps that's the part of his review that you are thinking of. Look, all I'm saying is that as audiophiles, we might be interested in knowing exactly what we're buying when we buy a mono cartridge. And as for me, were I to purchase the Grado, I would use it with the mono switch on my preamplifier engaged so as to eliminate, or at least further attenuate, even the last bit of noise produced by vertical modulation of the stylus tip.

By the way also, the Lyra mono cartridges, at least the Helikon and the Delos (and probably by inference the Kleos), seem to be among the few historically that really are true mono. Too bad they cost so much. You're also right in saying that mono LPs are becoming very a la mode, and perhaps this trend has indeed induced the production of better mono cartridges, such as your AT.
fleib
1,124 posts
 
If a cart has vertical compliance it is not tracking only horizontally. The question is, the how and why of vertical rejection. Does the cart actually avoid the pitfalls of a stereo cart + mono switch as described in their literature?

They repeatedly refer to their mono offerings as "true mono". If a cart has stereo coils hooked up internally to reject vertical cantilever motion output, can or will it also avoid said pitfalls?
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,873 posts
 
Speaking of Art Dudley, and the "mono-ness" of the Decca cartridge (as I did above), Dudley talks about that in his review of the Decca Maroon (the entry-level model) in his column in the current (December) issue of Stereophile.
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