Curious Why Benz Micro Slid Into Obscurity

I don’t like constant innovation, innovation is not always an indication of improvement, perhaps in terms of measurements but listening ears could say the opposite and I don’t appreciate factories that put new products on the market that replace older ones at an incessant pace, but I believe that a company is serious even if it doesn’t have anything new to show for some time.

@best-groove  I love that! Well said. This especially applies to phono cartridges. Not that new tech and materials aren't great, but I think it's too easy to upset the delicate balance and lose the beauty of sound here. I prefer good old aluminum bodies over (say) carbon fiber or exotic-wood-flavor-of-the-month. Copper coils and iron armatures are hard to beat. And aluminum cantilevers are underrated (though Benz incorporates boron absolutely beautifully). 

Actually, in the “good old days”, cartridge bodies of all types were typically made of plastic. Inexpensive and both strong and stiff plastic. Koetsu was fairly unique in offering wood bodies with exotic Japanese lacquer finishes. Metal bodies heralded the “modern era”. Ortofon was one of the first to offer titanium, although someone else may point out otherwise. Anyway with metal bodies and good marketing higher prices than ever before could be rationalized.

Is the Gullwing really just an LP-S without the wood body ?

The LP-S arrived today, and is now sitting at the end of a Series IV (which balanced it with about a centimeter of weight adjustment to spare). It's playing its first record for me, the Opus 3 Test Record 1. Going back and forth between tracks played with it and with the Kontrapunkt C is showing me a pleasant surprise: I'm hearing vocal details I hadn't heard with the Ortofon. I know Therese Juel's track very well indeed, and this is an incremental improvement. It looks like table 2 will be purely MC (LP-S, Kontapunkt C, Cadenza Mono), and when Lee at Acoustand makes me two more pods I'll have the great moving iron shootout on Table 1.

@dogberry 

Congratulations. The Benz LP and then LPS introduced me to the world of higher end MCs. The sound and tone of the LPS is just beautiful and balanced. On my system, it seemed best playback loading was 47k with an Aesthetix Io also on an SME V.