Phono Cartridge Reviews

I'm going to tell a story about blind listening, because it illustrates what I consider the most important issue in today's audiophile environment. I'm going to skip the names of the participants because you probably know them. And I'm not going to name the components, because their role in this story is merely as symbols of their type. Here is what I'll reveal: We were playing LPs through an expertly curated, six-figure–priced sound system in a largish room that suited the large speakers perfectly.

The occasion was a "listening party" at a friend's apartment. The guest list included me and four of the most experienced listeners I know. The plan was for everyone to nosh lightly, drink good wine, and weigh in on a new, unnamed, not-free low-output MC phono cartridge, only available on a limited, made-to-order basis.

"New York is an ugly city, a dirty city," John Steinbeck wrote in 1953. "But there is one thing about it—once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough." Decades later, the novelist's insight about this appalling, incomparable city still feels true. New Yorkers love to complain about the summers, with their wafting miasma of hot garbage and urine; about the superannuated subway system, which only sometimes resembles a psilocybin trip gone really wrong; about the purgatorial agony of finding an apartment; about the affronts of existing shoulder-to-shoulder with the stupendously rich. . .

What I'm getting around to saying is that easily the best part of living here is the people. One of them is Jeffrey Catalano, who has been a drummer, painter, DJ, and construction worker and today runs a hi-fi business, High Water Sound, from a loft in a former sail-making factory on Water Street in Manhattan's financial district.

Over the last 40 years, I have set up or serviced literally thousands of turntables, and during that time I have seen a lot of increasingly sophisticated tools become available to help in getting your turntable optimized. I've had my eye on the Shaknspin speed analyzer since it was launched a couple of years ago, and now there's a new Shaknspin2, which promises more accurate results.

As an upstart journalist-flâneur, my basic urge is to step on the gas and let my '54 Buick careen down the freeway, crashing into guardrails on both sides. Old Buicks were built for that, and I would love to take readers on one of those kinds of rides.

But when I write this monthly column, I find myself aiming for a different feel, more like driving cross-country in a '70s Ford station wagon, documenting motels and gas stations. A trip where it's fun to roll easy, take in the views, and stop at every car museum, snake farm, and stalactite cave.

This month, I'm going to put some miles on the Ford's odometer as I investigate the effects of Ron Sutherland's newest current-drive creation: a $3800 transimpedance moving coil headamp called the SUTZ. Along the way, I will also re-review Dynavector's $1250 DV-20X2 moving coil cartridge and examine what might be the sweetest spot in Dynavector's cartridge lineup: the $2150 XX-2 MKII.

In last month's Gramophone Dreams, I explained why doing any sort of empirical study of high-quality digital sources was extremely difficult. That any success I might achieve as a reporter would boil down to my ability to employ metaphors to describe a DAC's clarity and dynamic personality. Concocting metaphors for DAC reviews is risky because it assumes readers will be familiar with the sound of my amplifier and speakers and, ideally, with one of the DACs I'm using in the comparison. That's a lot to assume.

Since 1925, Japan-based Luxman Corporation has manufactured high-quality integrated amplifiers, preamplifiers, power amplifiers, phono stages, turntables, and, more recently, DACs and CD players. But it has been 40 years since Luxman introduced a new phono cartridge; the last one was the LMC-2 in 1982, released just after 1981's LMC-1. That dry period ended with the introduction of the Luxman LMC-5 ($2695).

Whenever I do turntable-setup seminars, I complain to the participants about the lack of cartridge-pin diameter and clip-opening standards. Anyone who does their own setup has experienced it: The connection is too tight or too loose. Forcing the clip onto the pin usually results in a broken-off clip that most end users don't have the soldering skills needed to repair; in the worst case, it can even result in damage to the cartridge when you try to remove the clip from the pin.