Classic Ortofon Cartridges: The MC2000 MK II or the MC3000 MK II?
This thread was initiated about a year ago, and so it is not an old thread by audiogon standards. You can easily find threads that are 20 years old here. Anyway, to be clear, which cartridge do you have? It sounds like you have an MC 3000. Is that correct? I am interested to hear from the person who started this thread a year ago. He was about to take possession of an MC 5000. I would like to know how it compares to his other Ortofon MCX000 cartridges. |
Where do you see lots of cartridges with pitting and oxidation in Japan? Have you been there, and have you toured the various audio stores where used gear is sold? I’m just wondering. In my experience really good quality used audio equipment has generally been very well cared for by Japanese owners. Much of the stuff looks like new. I have seen some equipment on HIFIDO that does look the worse for wear, but my personal experience touring in Tokyo is quite the opposite. Anyway, buying any used cartridge is a crapshoot for sure. You’d like to know who owned it and what kind of person he or she was. Also, although the big cities like Tokyo do get very humid in summer, air conditioning is common everywhere you go. So I don’t know why one would expect cartridges to be rusting out, any more then you’d expect in Miami for example. |
Raul and Edgeware you are correct and I was wrong in stating that 2.2g to 2.7g was the range of VTF for the MC2000. I was reading a table for the MC2000mkII when I got the info believing it to be for the MC2000. It seemed incorrect to me too, and I just double checked my source and found my error, only to get on line here and find that you’d already corrected me. Thanks for that. I’ve been tracking the MC2000 at 1.6g anyway. The MC2000 is also much higher in compliance than the MC7500, which also jibes with my memory. Whereas the MC2000mkII is about the same as the MC7500 in compliance. |
Good points, Raul. Any thoughts on the surprisingly high recommended VTF (2.2-2.7g), for both cartridges? My old MC7500 is tracking just fine at about 2.2g. Before I finally looked up the recommended VTF, I set it at 1.6g, just based on my faulty memory, and it actually did fine at that VTF, too. I do think it's a bit better at 2.2g. |
Edgeware, In his original Stereophile review, none other than J Gordon Holt rated the MC2000 the best he had yet heard, while he also cited its problems (high cost and minuscule output). So I’d say the MC2000 put Ortofon on the high end map. There was no one more influential back then than Holt, except maybe HP. But Holt was the elder statesman, having founded S'phile way before HP founded TAS. Anyway, this thread got me thinking about my MC7500, which has been sitting on a shelf for more than a year (or maybe more than a few years), not in use. Today I mounted it in my Kenwood L07D, driving Raul's 3160 Phonolinepreamp into modified Atma-sphere amplifiers driving modified Sound Lab 845PXs. After about an hour of warm up, the MC7500 is very very good. Better than I remembered it. More "musical" and better in low bass definition and extension, compared to the AT ART7 it displaced. I plan to listen to it for an extended period. I am still not sure if I would rate it ahead of my MC2000. I was surprised to read that the recommended VTF is 2.2 to 2.7g, as for the MC2000. I wonder why two such high compliance cartridges require relatively high VTF. Perhaps due to stylus shape? Comments appreciated. |
Back in “the day”, head amps were perhaps more common than SUTs for augmenting phono gain to levels required for LOMC cartridges. One of the best was the Counterpoint SA2, which was all tube. I owned one for a while. It was a bit noisy but mine could have had a problem I was not capable of detecting back then. I think NYAL had one that used nuvistors. Mark Levinson had a solid state model. Let us know how yours works out. |
Dover, I think a carbide can be made by combining aluminum oxide with carbon at high heat. That’s what I think, having looked it up just like you probably did. I also think that there was no mention of carbon being used in the manufacture of the ortofon cartridge bodies. Ergo they can’t be carbides based on the information previously divulged. Or a nitride or a nonmetallic oxide. If you and Raul believe that an aluminum oxide by itself can qualify as a ceramic after appropriate processing, ok. |
From reading Neonknight’s quote from the Ortofon website, I have a hunch what they are saying is that when you heat Aluminum Oxide to 1600 degrees C, it will form a ceramic-like substance, but being an oxide of aluminum, I am not sure it meets the formal definition of a "ceramic", as summarized in Wiki and elsewhere: "Ceramic material is an inorganic, non-metallic, often crystalline oxide, nitride, or carbide material. Some elements, such as carbon or silicon, may be considered ceramics. Ceramic materials are brittle, hard, strong in compression, and weak in shearing and tension." So, since the body is an oxide of Aluminum, which is a metal, the body of the Ortofon cartridges does not meet this formal definition. Other sources give essentially the same definition, including the "non-metallic" qualifier. |
It’s always a subjective judgment to say who got enough credit for what, but if I recall the original Gordon Holt review of the MC2000 and the T2000, in Stereophile, he was blown away, despite his misgivings about its high compliance and very low output. And back then Holt was “the man” so far as high end audio reviews were concerned, at least as influential as MF is today. I believe he put the MC2000 at the top of the heap. Of course, HP shared the top status with JGH. I don’t recall reading his review. |
For the record, I meant to write "fine cartridge", not "find cartridge" in my summary of the 7500. My impression of the two cartridges, 2000 vs 7500 is just the opposite of yours, in two different tonearms on two different systems. I found the 2000 to be more lush and a bit more dynamic, in the best possible ways. Goes to show ya..... something. Neon, I have a longstanding interest in the Transfiguration cartridges. It was a great loss when that company went out of business, but given the nearly incestuous relationships among Japanese cartridge manufacturers, it may well be the case that the top line Transfigurations live on, under another name. |
edgewear, I never found the MC7500 to sound "edgy" or harsh at all. In fact, I would characterize it as remarkably neutral, almost to a fault, which is to say that if anything it fell a bit short on bringing out the drama and contrasts put into the music by the musicians. But as in most cases where one tries to describe an aural impression, what I just wrote is an exaggeration. It's a very find cartridge, in my opinion. |
ihco, I don't know how Raul would answer your question about the 4-digit Ortofon cartridges, but from the MC2000 up to the MC7500, those were their flagship, "best", most expensive cartridges. After the MC7500, they continued development but abandoned that 4-digit naming system. Moreover, with each new high end model since then they have experimented with materials, method of production, shape of cartridge body, cantilever material, and stylus shape. So in some sense the different models have little in common save to say they were all top of Ortofon line at one time or another. |
In my opinion, the remarkable thing about the MC2000 is that it does use an aluminum cantilever and a line contact stylus. Neither is really very exotic. Yet the sound is sublime in either of my two audio systems. This is evidence that one ought not to judge a cartridge a priori based on the materials of which it is made. Chakster, You wrote, "The question is who is your supplier, you can buy NOS MC2000 only from serious collectors of vintage high-end, and they can honestly describe the condition. My NOS sample is absolutely perfect and fully original, I am so happy to have it in my collection of the best LOMC. Never seen a NOS sample for sale, only hardly used or damaged samples." But you MUST have seen an NOS sample for sale at least once; otherwise you wouldn't own one. My advice is, if you have not already done so, see how it mates with your 4212 current-drive phono stage and report back. It's not going to give you any of the pleasure of which it is capable while sitting in its OEM box. |
Who is able to supply a beryllium cantilever these days? I thought beryllium was verboten. Regardless, the MC2000 came with an unusual aluminum cantilever, and it might be best to stick with the OEM cantilever in order to preserve the original SQ, particularly because beryllium and aluminum are so different in their character. However if it sounds good, it is good. |
I own both an MC2000 and an MC7500. I cannot recall what is the difference between an MC2000 Mk2 and the original MC2000, but it may have to do with the signal voltage output, 0.05mV for the MC2000. I rank the MC2000 as one of the two or three best cartridges I have ever heard in my life. Scuttlebutt is that the Mk2 version and the MC3000 were just attempts to increase the output voltage but that the trade-off was a loss of "magic". I rank the MC2000 ahead of the MC7500 (and ahead of most other LOMC cartridges), but the MC7500 is also superb. The big issue with the MC2000 is, of course, its miniscule voltage output. I have three high end, high output phono stages, and none of them really cut the mustard with this cartridge, even though the results were good enough for me to hear that it is special. As you probably know, the MC2000 was originally marketed with a matching SUT; I think it’s called the T2000. I have never owned a SUT, and the T2000 is at least as rare as the MC2000. So I was not about to go that route. Finally, Dave Slagle of Intact Audio and EMIA came to my aid. Dave built me a special solid state head amp with a very low input impedance. I think we calculated that it adds 24db of gain. I plug that into the MM inputs of a Manley Steelhead, set for 55db of gain, and this seems to work very well. Ergo, plan on 80db of total gain that you can get one way or another (phono plus linestage, for example). Why is this cartridge so great? I think it could be because it has minimal turns of wire on its coils, resulting in very low moving mass (and also its tiny voltage output). It also is high compliance compared to nearly every other MC cartridge. You correctly surmise that you need a low effective mass tonearm, and, since I run my own MC2000 on a DV505 using a carbon fiber headshell, I can say the DV505 can work great. (Don’t use the OEM DV headshell; it is too heavy.) Finally, since the MC2000 has a very very low internal resistance of 2 ohms, it actually makes a good amount of current. (Current output = voltage output/internal resistance. 0.05mV/2 ohms = 25uA) It’s extremely well suited to drive one of the "current-drive" phono stages. I’d love to try that. It’s instructive to re-read Gordon Holt’s original review of the MC2000 in Stereophile. He noted that in order to achieve the accepted range of resonant frequency, one in theory would need to use a tonearm with total effective mass of 5 grams!!! Because of the relatively high mass of the cartridge and its unusually high compliance. |
