A budget moving-coil that out-performs three of its more expensive rivals.
We spent eight weeks listening to four cartridges in the same arm, blind, with two listeners and a tea-break every forty minutes. The cheapest one won. Here is the full report.
The brief was simple, and the result was — to us, at the start of the test — surprising. Four moving-coil cartridges in the same arm on the same turntable, played into the same phono stage and amplifier, listened to over eight weeks by two listeners who knew the test was happening but did not, at any point, know which cartridge was playing. The price spread, from cheapest to most expensive, was approximately four-to-one. The cheapest cartridge — by a margin we are now, after much repeated listening, confident is real — was the one we preferred.
I want to begin with the caveats, because this is the kind of result that, when written up carelessly, can be misleading. The test was conducted in our own listening room, on equipment we are familiar with, by two listeners whose hearing has its own particular biases. The records used were varied — classical, jazz, folk, two of contemporary popular music — but were inevitably a smaller sample than a fully rigorous test would require. The conclusion is, therefore, that this particular cartridge, in this particular system, was preferred. We do not claim universality.
How the test was run
The four cartridges were each fitted, in turn, to a single arm by one of us, while the other was out of the room. The cartridge in use was marked on a chart that was kept by the listener who fitted it, sealed in an envelope, and not opened until the end of the eight-week test. Setup was performed each time to the same protocol: VTF set with a digital scale to the manufacturer's recommended figure, alignment performed with the same protractor, azimuth checked by ear and by oscilloscope.
Each cartridge was given two weeks of break-in time in normal use before any formal listening began. After break-in, the same four records were played in the same order, three times per session, with notes taken by each listener independently. Notes were exchanged only after each fortnight's listening was complete.
What the listeners said, without knowing
The notes, when we compared them at the end of each fortnight, were remarkably consistent. The two listeners agreed, on roughly nine listening sessions out of ten, on which cartridge they preferred — without, at any point, knowing which one they were hearing. This was not an outcome we expected. We had assumed that the differences between modern moving-coil cartridges in this price range would be subtle enough that two listeners would disagree as often as they agreed. They did not.
The cartridge that we both, consistently, preferred was the cheapest of the four. Its retail price was, at the time of the test, just under three hundred pounds. The most expensive of the four was just over a thousand pounds. The two cartridges in the middle were six hundred and eight hundred pounds respectively. The cheapest cartridge won eleven of the sixteen listening sessions outright, was the joint preferred cartridge in three, and was second-best in only two.
The cheapest cartridge won eleven of the sixteen listening sessions outright. We had not expected this, and we are still, mildly, trying to understand it.
Why, we think
We have spent some weeks trying to understand the result. We have one hypothesis and several smaller observations. The hypothesis is this: the cheapest cartridge, by virtue of being designed for a price point, has a less ambitious tonal balance than the more expensive ones. It does not attempt to extract every micro-detail. It does not attempt to present an enormous, three-dimensional soundstage. It does, instead, present music with what we might call a settled tone — a tone that does not draw attention to itself, and that allows the listener to listen through the cartridge to the recording.
The more expensive cartridges, by contrast, were all in various ways more obviously characterful. One was very detailed but slightly tonally bright. One was very smooth but slightly slow on transients. One was very dimensional but slightly artificial in its imaging. None of these characteristics, in isolation, was unpleasant. The combination, over weeks of listening, became fatiguing in a way that the cheaper cartridge did not.
What this does not mean
The result does not mean that cheaper is, in general, better. It means that — in this specific test, with these specific cartridges, in this specific system — the cheapest cartridge was preferred. We are confident that other system contexts would produce different results. We are also confident that the more expensive cartridges in the test would, in different rooms with different equipment, be preferable to the cheapest one.
The general lesson, if there is one, is more modest. It is that the relationship between price and listening pleasure, in this category, is not linear. It is not even monotonic. A cartridge that has been designed to do its job without drawing attention to itself can, in certain systems, outperform cartridges three times its price that have been designed to do something more ambitious.
What we will keep
We have, between the two of us, bought a copy of the winning cartridge for our own systems. We will, between us, return the loaned units to their suppliers in due course. We will not, in this review, name any of the four. The reason is the same as it always is: published recommendations distort second-hand prices and, more importantly, can be misread as one-size-fits-all advice. Readers who would like the specific names are welcome to write to us, and we will reply individually.