Mono cartridge recommendation

@andysf @billstevenson @chakster 

Thanks for the info.  Between classical, jazz, blues, and rock I probably have maybe  4 or 5 hundred mono records, maybe more, I never thought to count.  They span from early jazz, blues and classical lps to the rock Era from bands like the Kinks, Beatles, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, The Moody Blues and many others.

It looks like the AT33 is one I'll look into further.

There are lots of opinions on stylus profiles in relation to playing mono LPs. One side of that issue is addressed pretty well on the Miyajima website, but it is a bit one-sided.

@lewm  When I saw your comment about the issue of mono carts being "addressed pretty well" on the Miyajima website I thought that they must have finally spent a few yen and found an English speaking technical editor. Sad to say there is still the original incoherent blather such as:
"There are a lot of monaural LPs to excellent records such as classical music, jazz, a lock.
When I look for the LP of the excellent performance, monaural recording knows a thing more than the half.
And I want to come to listen to a monaural LP by a good sound.

There are people purchasing a monaural cartridge easily.
And there are people playing a monaural LP with an existing monaural cartridge and stereo cartridge.
The people feel a monaural LP like an old sound by the influence of the cartridge.
And an image is left as an old LP.
In fact, the monaural LP has better sound than the stereo LP.
The reason is simple.
It is natural that a sound is better than the stereo LP to put two signals in as for the monaural LP which installs one signal in one ditch."
For a company that sells the vast majority of its cartridges to the western world to be unwilling to provide information about their offerings in a understandable form is, IMO, inexcusable.  Tokyo is full of people who could correct this for less than the price of a mid range cartridge so it not a matter of ability or expense.

I know that some people find it amusing but to me it borders on contempt that they make so little effort to communicate in a meaningful way with their potential customers.
And don't get me started on their tacky little red velvet boxes!

Well, you have a lot of mono LPs and they are not from pre-50s era.

1) 0.7mil is suitable for mono reissues and old mono records made after 1960s.

2) 1.0mil is for deep groove pre-50s mono records.


Modern stylus profile will give you more than conical with any true mono cartridge.

andysf,  Sorry about that.  I guess I was thinking of a chart on their website, not necessarily a written essay on the subject. The Japanese are notoriously poor with English.  Even English teaching in Japan is poor.  From what I can gather, the two languages are very different in construction.  Many of us can recall the laughable owners manuals that came with Sony and products of other major well-heeled Japanese corporations, as recently as 10-15 years ago.  They do much better these days.  Miyajima is tiny and probably not able to muster good translators.  My own son is a scholar in Japanese and can speak it better than many natives, yet he hates to translate for my benefit.  From the look on his face, it seems to give him a headache.

This is interesting because I was kind of curious about how one would optimize a system for mono listening. Most of my mono listening is from digital sources (you shouldn’t hiss during a pandemic, it’s not sanitary). Actually that was the great boon of the digital era - the death of fake stereo. Not having a true audiophile’s income having a separate system for mono seems a little like having your own Fast Eddie Felson model two-piece screw-together pool cue. Having a single speaker for such a system is intuitive also because you can put twice the money into the single speaker, and you only have to buy a single monoblock amplifier.