MONO cartridge recommendation

salectric wrote:

In fact, looking over the whole thread I’m not sure who I recalled suggesting that mono records played with a stereo pickup will be too noisy.

That was probably me, but I need to clarify that I was only referring to vintage 1950s-’60s mono LPs, not modern reissues. I have several from both categories. I have several modern mono reissues--the 2014 Beatles EMI/Parlophone reissues, the Capitol Beach Boys reissues including Pet Sounds and Smile, Acoustic Sounds Nat King Cole reissue, etc. All are really quiet, even when played by a stereo cartridge.

OTOH, I have many original 1950s-60s mono LPs rescued from bargain bins for 50-99 cents, that are totally noisy with all 3 of my stereo carts and totally quiet with my one mono cart.

London has no info on their website about their mono cartridge, for some reason. I read about it elsewhere, and it is a true mono only, horizontal-modulation only sensing design. It has no magnet & coil for the vertical! Why would that cause hum, I wonder?

Salectric, If your mono LP is truly pristine, I don’t suppose you would have a particular problem with noise due to surface wear, but the point was and is that on mono LPs, the audio signal is encoded only via lateral deflections of the stylus. Any vertical deflection of the stylus will induce surface noise and no music. The point about a true mono cartridge is that such cartridges produce no signal in response to vertical deflections. Many such cartridges, in fact, have no vertical compliance. Ergo, playing a mono LP with a mono cartridge is very likely to result in less noise due to surface irregularities than playing the same LP with a stereo cartridge. This is just a fact, not subject to opinion. With a mono cartridge derived from a stereo cartridge by internal bridging or if you use a mono switch on your preamplifier, the noise due to vertical deflection of the cantilever is also cancelled via the summing of the two channels. However most of the latter type mono cartridges do have vertical compliance and some of those do respond to vertical motion of the stylus; it’s just cancelled later in the pathway. (In some cases, mono cartridges derived from stereo are built such that there are no coils or magnets to transduce vertical motion of the stylus, in which case the cartridge cannot respond to vertical with signal voltage output.)

I mentioned that I played mono LPs with stereo cartridges for decades with no thought to this issue. So, I certainly never said that such a practice is "too noisy". I did say that now that I am cognizant of these issues and use a mono switch where I have one, there is a very obvious improvement in signal to surface noise ratio and in addition in other areas of reproduction. Mono LPs that I heretofore have avoided due to what I thought were noisy surfaces sound much much better even in feaux mono (using a mono switch). 

Sorry. I am sure you know all this stuff, and I see that you are way ahead of me in already owning a Premium Be Mono.  That's the one I want.

Very good information.  Thanks guys!