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Which MM cartridge?

K

kevinrt

pfm Member
I wish to try an MM cartridge with my current setup and wonder if anyone with experience of similar equipment could tell me what had worked well for them.

Thorens TD124 mk2
SME 3009, series II, pre-improved, removable headshell
Croft Micro 25 with internal MM phonostage
Leak Stereo 20
Quad esl57

Budget up to £500

What have you used in similar setups that worked well for you?

regards

Kevin
 
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I’m not sure if you’ll find one easily, but I used a Cartridgeman MusicMaker 3 to great effect with a stand alone Croft phonostage. Great synergy.
 
Vested interest alert! I also had a couple of Len’s musicmakers. I bought a Clearaudio V1 off here with low miles that seemed to be similar in pleasure. Again a standard cart that been modified to great effect. Mine was £300 +. Yours for £300 :) There’s a V2 with more attractive body for about £750
 
MUTTY1 said:
Vested interest alert! I also had a couple of Len’s musicmakers. I bought a Clearaudio V1 off here with low miles that seemed to be similar in pleasure. Again a standard cart that been modified to great effect. Mine was £300 +. Yours for £300 :) There’s a V2 with more attractive body for about £750
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Oddly enough the Virtuoso v2 is what I use now, in an all Clearaudio set up. I probably should have just recommended that in the first place :)
 
I use an A&R P77 with rebuilt suspension and JAS hyper elliptical retip into a breathed-on Puresound P10. I got rid of my Esco Troika and I don’t miss it with my LP12/Ittok. MCsare a big PITA cost and step-up wise and if peeps paid more attention to the MM cartridge’s input capacitance requirements (including that of their arm cable and amp MM inputs) I suspect many would hold MM cartridges in greater esteem.
 
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Ortofon 2M Bronze is a lovely sounding thing at £295.

Like Grado and Nagaoka MP series, the Ortofon MMs are also IM (induced magnet) type. The primary advantage of IM is that effective moving mass is typically lower than that of any standard MM and most MCs. Cartridge makers often say a lot about reduced tip mass by way of having fitted nude tips (and even half-width rectangular shank nude diamonds), however, this is but one end of the 360º see-saw that is the cantilever, i.e. both ends count. With IM, basically, a fixed position magnet is held in proximity to an über-light bit of permalloy (a soft iron alloy, often a thin walled cylinder of same that has been inserted into the back end of the aluminium cantilever) that moves in relation to the coil pole extensions within the cartridge body proper (i.e. rather than having a heavier permanent magnet in the same position).

Regardless, as @Chris has found to his pleasure, getting input loading optimized for a particular MM/IM is the great equalizer in the MM vs. MC 'which is best' debate.
 
Thanks for the replies so far.

It would be good to know if any of those mentioned have been a good match to the SME 3009, pre-improved, removable headshell arm.

regards

Kevin
 
Craig B said:
Like Grado and Nagaoka MP series, the Ortofon MMs are also IM (induced magnet) type.
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I have to admit I’d misunderstood this and viewed Ortofons incorrectly as an MM. Just looked up how the VMS system works and you are of course entirely correct. Any idea why the Ortofons are so critical of capacitance and loading when the Nagoka barely cares IME? I’d always misunderstood this as a MM/MI divide and there are several posts from me on other threads digging in on what is clearly a flawed view.

I certainly had real issues loading a 2M Black, it requiring next to no capacitance at the phono stage and I even reduced the loading resistance. IIRC I ended up at 33K, 39pF with the Quad and never got anywhere with the Verdier into which it sounded awful. The Nagaoka sounds much the same into my modified Quad board and a totally stock 220pF 47K. Similar into the Verdier which sounds great with vintage Shure so I assume was designed with a V15 in mind. The Ortofon was just ear-bendingly thin and bright into the stock Quad board or Verdier, all about the hi-hat and surface noise! Why doesn’t the Nagaoka care?

PS All of these will be fine in a Series II 3009. Just be aware the plastic body Nags don’t fit in the standard SME shell (the metal body MP-300 and 500 do). I’d also consider Audio Technica, both the new lines seem very well liked and £300 will get you a nice stylus profile.
 
The big issue with MM (IM) is their inductance, which comes from lots (and LOTS) of turns round the pole pieces; typical values are round 500mH - half a Henry. This forms a partly damped resonant system interacting with the load capacitance (including the hidden capacitance in the windings themselves) and the damping of the input resistance. We can get a rough idea with what is going on from omega^2 = 1/ LC, where omega = 2 pi f, and Z = srqt(L/C). Picking arbitrary example numbers out of thin air of L=500mH, and C=500pF (chosen to make the sum easier!), we get Z = 32K, and f = 10KHz. So this example would be slightly under-damped, and roll off a bit early, so you would probably want less C!

But this is only part of the story, as the mechanical system also has a resonance in the high treble or low ultrasonic, which pushes the response up, so we need this electrical low pass filter to flatten it, and give a composite response that is OK.

Coming back to the point, both IM and MM have lots of turns on their pole pieces, giving high inductances, and this is what dictates the load sensitivity, in interaction with the mechanical behaviour.
 
Tony L said:
I have to admit I’d misunderstood this and viewed Ortofons incorrectly as an MM. Just looked up how the VMS system works and you are of course entirely correct. Any idea why the Ortofons are so critical of capacitance and loading when the Nagoka barely cares IME? I’d always misunderstood this as a MM/MI divide and there are several posts from me on other threads digging in on what is clearly a flawed view.

I certainly had real issues loading a 2M Black, it requiring next to no capacitance at the phono stage and I even reduced the loading resistance. IIRC I ended up at 33K, 39pF with the Quad and never got anywhere with the Verdier into which it sounded awful. The Nagaoka sounds much the same into my modified Quad board and a totally stock 220pF 47K. Similar into the Verdier which sounds great with vintage Shure so I assume was designed with a V15 in mind. The Ortofon was just ear-bendingly thin and bright into the stock Quad board or Verdier, all about the hi-hat and surface noise! Why doesn’t the Nagaoka care?

PS All of these will be fine in a Series II 3009. Just be aware the plastic body Nags don’t fit in the standard SME shell (the metal body MP-300 and 500 do). I’d also consider Audio Technica, both the new lines seem very well liked and £300 will get you a nice stylus profile.
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My guess is that some of the differences come down to magnetic gauss (or field strength) vs. number of turns per coil for a given output level.

Starting with Nagaoka MP series, these have a comparatively large samarium cobalt magnet embedded within the cartridge body proper, meaning that less turns of wire would be required per coil for a given output, relative to something with a less strong magnetic field. Ortofon, for example, employ a minuscule ring magnet that is embedded within the stylus knob just aft of the cantilever pivot. Although this is closer to the action, many more turns of coil wire are required for a given output. There are quite a lot of turns on an Ortofon coil and two of these coils per channel. Looking at Ortofon's specs for 2M Black indicates 630mH for L.

Grado are the champions in this respect, as they've essentially combined high magnetic gauss with fewest coil turns via having a largish magnet in very close proximity to the moving permalloy to coil pole extensions junction (via a large pole 'plate' extension), taking L down to 45mH whilst retaining 5mV output in the process.

Ortofon VMS:
Ortofon-VMS-generator-2.png
 
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Chris said:
I use an A&R P77 with rebuilt suspension and JAS hyper elliptical retip into a breathed-on Puresound P10. I got rid of my Esco Troika and I don’t miss it with my LP12/Ittok. MCsare a big PITA cost and step-up wise and if peeps paid more attention to the MM cartridge’s input impedance requirements (including that of their arm cable and amp MM inputs) I suspect many would hold MM cartridges in greater esteem.
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Completely agree. I have a pretty good collection of MM/MI cartridges for my SL-10. For a long time I was using a valab phonostage, and whilst it was configurable for MC carts, it was fixed 47k for MM. I couldn’t believe the difference inserting a couple of carefully matched loading plugs made, even just via a splitter cable.
 
Tony L said:
I have to admit I’d misunderstood this and viewed Ortofons incorrectly as an MM. Just looked up how the VMS system works and you are of course entirely correct. Any idea why the Ortofons are so critical of capacitance and loading when the Nagoka barely cares IME? I’d always misunderstood this as a MM/MI divide and there are several posts from me on other threads digging in on what is clearly a flawed view.

I certainly had real issues loading a 2M Black, it requiring next to no capacitance at the phono stage and I even reduced the loading resistance. IIRC I ended up at 33K, 39pF with the Quad and never got anywhere with the Verdier into which it sounded awful. The Nagaoka sounds much the same into my modified Quad board and a totally stock 220pF 47K. Similar into the Verdier which sounds great with vintage Shure so I assume was designed with a V15 in mind. The Ortofon was just ear-bendingly thin and bright into the stock Quad board or Verdier, all about the hi-hat and surface noise! Why doesn’t the Nagaoka care?

PS All of these will be fine in a Series II 3009. Just be aware the plastic body Nags don’t fit in the standard SME shell (the metal body MP-300 and 500 do). I’d also consider Audio Technica, both the new lines seem very well liked and £300 will get you a nice stylus profile.
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Come to think of it, Tony, you've been an MI guy most all of the way back to your M25FL days.

IME, with MI/IM there is often much less perceived distortion when the signal gets hot. At least I used to believe that I could hear the difference, perhaps I wasn't imagining things.

The only other cartridge type that I felt the same way about was electret condenser, by way of a Micro Acoustics 2002e (as well the old Philips ones), albeit, this featured a beryllium rod cantilever and a nude tip so small that it was difficult to see without a loupe. I wish I had kept that one.
 
Craig B said:
Come to think of it, Tony, you've been an MI guy most all of the way back to your M25FL days.
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That is probably true thinking about it. I’ve owned a simply ridiculous amount of cartridges over the years. From memory, but I’ll inevitably miss some:

Shure M75EJ
Grado F1+
Linn Basik
Linn K9
Ortofon M25FL
Fidelity Research FR101
Stilton Audio Nagaoka MP11

Stilton Audio ATF5
AT OC9
Lyra Lydian B
Ortofon MC20FL
Ortofon MC10 Supreme
Dynavector XX1L
Denon DL110
Denon DL103
Audio Technica AT33PTG

Shure M3D
Pickering XV15
Shure M95ED
Ortofon 540/II
Ortofon 2M Black
Nagaoka MP500

Three distinct phases: early years from the late 70s through to mid 80s which was MM/MI. Mid phase: MC and flat-earth mindset. Current phase: rediscovering idler decks and MM/MI carts. I still have the 540/II and M95ED (which was in a MkI SL120 I found at the local auction) as spares.

Craig B said:
IME, with MI/IM there is often much less perceived distortion when the signal gets hot. At least I used to believe that I could hear the difference, perhaps I wasn't imagining things.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I am in absolutely no doubt that stylus profile and tip mass plays a very large part in what I like. I’m also pretty convinced fancy stiff cantilever material (boron, beryllium etc) removes a resonance and can see parallels between the MP-500 and say the OC9 and AT33 PTG. They were all beautifully secure and un-fizzy in the treble and I suspect some of that may be down to a non-aluminium cantilever. I’ve not thought about the generators in depth.

My big learning curve in recent years is recognising just how critical the phono stage loading is in assessing MM/MI carts and how 95% of negative feelings towards the better ones can likely be put down to incorrect loading. I wish all modern phono stages had loading settings for both resistance and capacitance. My Verdier has absolutely nothing so finding the Nags are a nice match with it was a real win. The MP-500 is a seriously good cart IMO. I guess some would accuse it of being a little polite, but much of that is it just lacks the distortion and edge of so many carts. It just sails through all the things that can trip even far more expensive carts up towards the end of side. A good tip on a good cantilever with a good generator that is very undemanding when it comes to mass and compliance so will work in most arms. I’m at the point I feel I’m done. I’ll just keep buying styluses now. The only thing that could tempt me away is a Decca as that is the one thing left on the bucket list, but that is incompatible with the iron platter on my 124 so a non-starter! I certainly don’t have a craving to go back to MCs.
 
I've never lived with a Decca of my own, but heard one extensively. On certain discs, there was nothing finer. But the weirdly low vertical compliance means it has some low frequency tracking issues, and it was an edge of the seat experience. But on discs that it liked, there was a directness of dynamics that I have not heard from anything else. Not on my bucket list, too stressful. But I am glad to have heard it. There are only a couple of cartridges from my youth I would go back to (given unlimited funds, time, somebody young with steady hands to set things up for me, and mint examples preserved in a time machine). FR 702 (one of the integral headshell models) and Koetsu (although I don't think current production is anything like the 1980s models I knew) and the Highphonic (if you could find an arm that really suited it).
 
Another thumbs up for the Ortofon 2M Bronze. I’m using it with an SME M2-9/301/Rega Aria2 combination. There appears to be no loading issues between Bronze and Aria. A slight brightness when new has settled down into a nicely revealing, open and engaging sound without any of the edge I’ve experienced with some MMs. Tracking and tracing capabilities are excellent.

I too am guilty of not realising the Bronze is MI. I bought it initially as a stop gap whilst I saved for a replacement Hana ML, but it’s so enjoyable I’m in no hurry. I also tried an AT OC9ML, but preferred the Bronze. A bit of an overlooked classic IMO. And to answer the OP, the Bronze worked fine in my SME 3009 S2 (non improved detachable headshell), and my 3009 improved - although neither arms were as revealing and dynamic as the M2-9.
 
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