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

I personally would not pay $12K for a cartridge, but I don't think the idea is "beyond stupid".

Davey, The (all tube) Atma-sphere MP1 will work fine with cartridges down to around 0.2mV, with no significant noise penalty, and this is without a SUT.  Beyond that, there is more than one hybrid tube/solid state phono stage that will also work well.  I modified my own MP1 by converting the input phono voltage gain stage to a solid state/tube hybrid circuit.  As a result, I can deal with even an Ortofon MC2000 (.05mV output) with inaudible noise and with quite a bit of headroom (no SUT needed).  The MP1 is a fully balanced device, input to output.  This provides for quite a bit of noise cancellation.  I think it is unwise in this hobby to make sweeping generalizations unless one has actually done the work to support such.

@rauliruegas I don’t think so. Concorde has almost identical specs to 2M Bronze, except slightly lower compliance. So it may not even be as good as the Bronze...

lewm, having heard the MP1 with a Ortofon A90, I guess it depends on what you call "no significant noise penalty"!
Sweeping generalizations without having done the actual work to support them...oh, please!!!

@lewm When it comes to analog, a phono preamplifier is the single most difficult component to engineer and build. MP1 (pushing $20,000!!!) uses 10 tubes to get 66dB of MC gain and another 6 tubes for line level. I have not heard it, but I doubt it would be considered low noise with the cartridges in question.

Yes, some of us own or can build a state of the art phono preamp, but the rest 99.99% of audiophiles buying these very low output cartridges are listening to garbage sound. Just because something makes noise and plays loud enough, doesn’t mean that it’s any good.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/liberty-audio-b2b-1-phono-preamplifier

This little gem does LOMC easy 

🎶👍

and yes yes I make them  

good Listening 

Peter