TIME'S CELEBRATION: ORTOFON FIRST CENTURY ANNIVERSARY ! ! ! ! !

Output of the Ortofon MC at 0.2mV is just too low. It will require a tremendous phono preamp, such as John Curl designed JC3+. Very low output lacks the necessary balls and drive in most systems.

For MC cartridges, ART9 at 0.5mV is the sweet spot. 

@lewm I will be trying the Concorde Century. But MC Century at $12K is beyond stupid. I can get an SME Model 20 for that price. Or a number of other awesome pieces of audio gear.

BTW, resonance would be at 11Hz. There are tons of other cartridges that would work just as well and better. And I'm not convinced that it's all that important.

@cardani No way! 2M Black is incredible.

@rauliruegas I don’t think so. Concorde has almost identical specs to 2M Bronze, except slightly lower compliance. So it may not even be as good as the Bronze...

@lewm When it comes to analog, a phono preamplifier is the single most difficult component to engineer and build. MP1 (pushing $20,000!!!) uses 10 tubes to get 66dB of MC gain and another 6 tubes for line level. I have not heard it, but I doubt it would be considered low noise with the cartridges in question.

Yes, some of us own or can build a state of the art phono preamp, but the rest 99.99% of audiophiles buying these very low output cartridges are listening to garbage sound. Just because something makes noise and plays loud enough, doesn’t mean that it’s any good.

@pbnaudio What are the fets used in that unit?

@pbnaudio Last batch of LSK389 I ordered directly from Linear Systems, more than half went straight to garbage. Discrete low noise jfet days are over. 

Those Toshibas are awesome, should be a very low noise phono preamplifier :)