Fremer's review of the Anna cartridge

Dear M. Lavigne: I would like that you come back again not to tell us what already posted but to tell us if you have any tiny concern/worry on what we are discussing here. I hope you can share your personal opinion on the whole subject.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Raul,

my point of posting my positive experience about the MC Anna were to possibly bring some discussion of the actual merits of the performance of the Anna to the thread. obviously that was not what participants in this thread want to dwell on.

i did write a post a few days ago on this situation but elected to not post it because i felt it would simply fly back at me by all the agenda holders in the thread. since you are asking for it, here it is;

in the manufacturer's comment section, responding to Fremer's review, Louis Dorio, the US representative for Ortofon, basically thanks Fremer for the positive comments of which there were plenty and makes no attempt to defend or contest anything that Fremer says in the MC Anna review. Louis and Ortofon took the high road, likely the best way to go. and i respect that.

i don't want to get into any sort of excuse making for Ortofon or the MC Anna. however; i do know about the original group of 8-10 MC Anna cartridges that were brought over for CES demos and Fremer.....since i ended up purchasing one of these after it was used as a demo at CES. this first group was not intended for retail and were a 'pre-release' group. 2 or 3 of these did have some issues with the rubber material holding the stylus to the body. after this was discovered production for retail was delayed while it was investigated. 6 months later the Anna was released for retail.

my Anna from this pre-release group has been perfect. another one from this group is in a friend's system and used daily with zero issues. i don't have knowledge of the other's from this pre-release group.

lots of products have initial issues with first production runs. but if they are not high profile who would know.

Fremer could have spun his review in many different ways. he could have dealt with the 'pre-release' Anna issue in another way if he wanted to. we are left with the way he wrote it. a few years ago he annoited the Ortofon A90 'king of the hill' in a matter of speaking. now he pulls no punches with the Anna. i was surprised at how he decided to handle a problem with a 'pre-release' cartridge.

i think that it's more significant that Fremer made the choice to hit the MC Anna hard for the issues he had with it in terms of reviews in general, than what it might or might not say about the MC Anna. but that's just me and my perspective.

Ortofon surely has egg on their face for allowing any problems at all....but.....in any case; the MC Anna is a fantastic cartridge. listen to one if you can.

i'm not one to typically particpate in bashing any product, manufacturer or person. it's negativity which does not enhance my enjoyment of the hobby. in my job i'm dealing with those issues all the damn time. when threads go down those roads i go listen to music.

i've owned lots of cutting edge gear at first release. many times, particularly with new fresh designs, there is a manufacturers learning curve. i accept that as a price of admission to that type of product. beta testing and pre-release products can uncover things (like the Anna). those type issues should not destroy the viability of the product. even Honda occasionally has issues with new product lines despite billions of dollars of development costs.

it's interesting (but not surprising) to me that no one has posted in this thread (that i recall seeing) about the rave review in Absolute Sound for the MC Anna by Jonathan Valin. also interesting that so little has been made of the great things Fremer said about the performance of the Anna. this fact tells me where people on this thread are coming from.

Thanks for you post Mike. This is the first I have read that that initial run of 8-10 cartridges were "pre-release" samples. Fremer makes no mention of this in the review. The episode had been described to me by a friend overseas as a "recall" of the fist production batch for the US market. Ortofon did take a high road not to discuss this in the Manufacturer's Comments section, but by not doing so, perhaps they became more vulnerable to more questions.

I think the thread has taken the course set out by the original title. I do think that the merits of the MC Anna should be discussed, but perhaps it will take the initiation of a new thread to do so.

I'm interested in hearing this cartridge, but did not go to CES and am not aware of a dealer around the Boston area that has one on demo, so this thread or some other about the cartridge would be most interesting. I would love to read from owners, about how the Anna compares to other cartridges like the Atlas, MSL Gold, AirTight Supreme or XV-1t. Valin does compare it to the Clearaudio.

I don't expect much mention of the Valin review in this thread because of the title of this thread. Both reviews do describe the Anna in pretty high terms and it would be interesting to compare those opinions to others held by owners or those who have heard it in their own systems. It is a relatively heavy cartridge at 16g, and as such would not be as ideal a match for my SME V-12 arm which is ideally suited for a cartridge that weighs 12.5g enabling the counterweight to be as close to the pivot as possible. But I am intrigued by the technology of this and the A90 and think that perhaps Ortofon is leading the way toward a whole new way to construct cartridges. And we all benefit from their pursuit of the next level of performance.

Finally, I don't read this thread as a bashing of the Anna. There have been some pretty critical comments towards Ortofon, but the real focus it seems to me is on Fremer and the choices that he made in writing the review. You comment on precisely this and I think this is what this thread is mostly about. Some have commented on QC in general and in this industry in particular, and that too is a legitimate issue that many of us have experienced.

I have personally owned 2 different era's of Ortofon cartridges and have had q/c problems with each of them. I know others that also had q/c problems with their Ortofons. I will not buy anything Ortofon

I don't understand why Ortofon didn't explain in their Manufacturer's Comments in Stereophile about the bad first batch and that the production problems had been corrected. This thread wouldn't have been necessary.

Did they think that if they didn't say anything that no one would notice that Fremer had to return the first two samples?

A little more honest explanation and less hype and obfuscation would do the high-end a world of good.

I don't understand why Ortofon didn't explain in their Manufacturer's Comments in Stereophile that the first preproduction batch had some problems and that production was stopped and the problems had been corrected before any were shipped for sale to the public. This thread wouldn't have been necessary.

Did they think that if they didn't say anything that no one would notice that Fremer had to return the first two samples?

A little more honest explanation and less hype and obfuscation would do the high-end a world of good.