My current Victor MC-L10 is magical with Luxman silver SUT (also relatively cheap $500 vintage toroidal SUT). However, my friend @nandric said the MC-1 sound like an MM cartridge to his ears :)
Victor MM are giant killers! Super easy to drive with any MM phono stages and truly outstanding in details and resolution. I prefer Victor black headshells over conventional silver on those arms.
It is interesting to see than MC-1 was twice as much in price compared to X-1IIe, but nowadays the situation different (the Victor X-1IIe is equal to the price on second hand MC-1 now).
I believe the reason is that MC-1 coil wire connected to the cantilever is very fragile and one channel malfunction is pretty common for MC-1, it's very hard to find a perfect sample. I bought 2 and the one claimed to be working can only reproduce one channel after arrival, pretty sad, looks like new in the box.
But X-1IIe and X-1II survived and does not have any technical problems in its construction even after 30-40 years. The X-1II also have beryllium cantilever and Shibata tip like MC-1.
Victor MM are giant killers! Super easy to drive with any MM phono stages and truly outstanding in details and resolution. I prefer Victor black headshells over conventional silver on those arms.
It is interesting to see than MC-1 was twice as much in price compared to X-1IIe, but nowadays the situation different (the Victor X-1IIe is equal to the price on second hand MC-1 now).
I believe the reason is that MC-1 coil wire connected to the cantilever is very fragile and one channel malfunction is pretty common for MC-1, it's very hard to find a perfect sample. I bought 2 and the one claimed to be working can only reproduce one channel after arrival, pretty sad, looks like new in the box.
But X-1IIe and X-1II survived and does not have any technical problems in its construction even after 30-40 years. The X-1II also have beryllium cantilever and Shibata tip like MC-1.