TIME'S CELEBRATION: ORTOFON FIRST CENTURY ANNIVERSARY ! ! ! ! !

Output of the Ortofon MC at 0.2mV is just too low. It will require a tremendous phono preamp, such as John Curl designed JC3+. Very low output lacks the necessary balls and drive in most systems.

For MC cartridges, ART9 at 0.5mV is the sweet spot. 

Dear @invictus005:  The " balls " are there and plenty only waiting to " handle " it in adequated ways.

Everything the same a 0.18mv always will performs with better highquality performance than one at 0.5mv. No doubt about.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

I'm using an Ortofon Winfield with an Ayre pre.......plenty of output....dead silence when the arm is lifted...even with my ear against the speaker.

Dear @stringreen : The Windfeld is something to own and its output is 0.3mv. As I said balls and drive are there, you only have to have the rigth system to ask for.

I can think that the new Windfeld Ti with’s lower 0.2mv output is even a better quality performer than the great one you own.

Maybe, time of an up-date? or maybe the 100th anniversary !

Btw, I ask @mikelavigne to chime on the LOMC 100th anniversary because when the Anna began and seen the " ligth " for the very firt time was Mike one of the first audiophiles in the audio world to own/listen it before the cartridges were at the Ortofon distributors. Maybe this time too.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

Invictus, On VA, one of the inmates posted that with his SME V, the new Ortofon Century will give a resonant frequency of about 10Hz, smack in the middle of the desired range.  So maybe you ought to give it a thought for use with your SME V.  For me, with MC cartridges, it almost seems that my rating would be inversely proportional to voltage output, which is to say the lower the signal voltage output, the better the cartridge sounds in comparison to other models from the same maker or even across brands. And you don't necessarily need an all solid state phono stage to achieve low noise and high gain.