Vintage MONO Cartridge Question ?

Grado doesn't do moving coil. They have two elliptical stylus moving iron cartridges, the MC+ with a 3-piece telescoped cantilever for $90 and the ME+ with 4-piece cantilver for $150. The last time I checked, the ME+ was a Stereophile recommended component.

I have an Audio Technica AT-MONO3/LP. It's a high output (1.2mV) moving coil cartridge with conical stylus. It retails at $189 at LpGear.com, but I got mine for around $116 on Amazon. Currently they're $132 there. I'm very happy with it. It's very quiet on old mono LPs and has transparent, honest sound and dynamics. It opened up my 2014 mono Beatles LPs significantly.

I take it you want a cartridge that will play pre-1962 mono records in their native mode--in other words, not a cartridge designed to track both mono and stereo records. In other words, with only two signal pinouts (+ and -), and cantilever compliance only in the horizontal plane.

The Denon DL-102 has an internal mono coil arrangement and just two signal pins--one positive and one negative to create a single output channel. It's a high output (3 mV) moving coil cartridge. It is compliant in both planes, but is internally and externally wired to only pick up horizontal motion. I found this description/review on Dagogo enlightening. 

Also, I stand by my recommendation for the Audio Technica AT-MONO3/LP. I got it for playing my 2014 Beatles mono records, but I've found it does well on pre-1962 mono LPs as well. It is dead-quiet in the vertical plane, and makes old mono LPs sound really quiet. Such mono LPs sound unlistenably noisy with a stereo cart.

A mono cartridge whose cantilever can deflect vertically can still be "true mono" if it creates no signal in that vertical motion. Such cartridges have the stationery coils aligned to respond only to vertical motion. The vertical compliance protects your stereo records from a brain fart when one might forget to swap cartridges before playing a stereo record.

And yeah, I know, the OP plans to have a dedicated mono rig where that "can't" happen. Still, just because a mono cartridge has 4 output pins doesn't mean it's internally a stereo cartridge with strapped outputs. Besides, how would that work? Wouldn't you need diodes or a circuit similar to what's in a mixer to prevent the two cartridge channels from feeding back to each other and creating noise? 

What such a cartridge *can* easily do is be an internal Y-adapter so the mono signal is sent to the left and right signal pins so you have true plug'n'play mono to your sterero outfit without need of an external Y-adapter to send the mono signal to both stereo channels.

BTW, from what I've read, the DL-102 may have a more limited bandwidth because its output is pretty high (3 mV) for a MC. This makes the coils on the cantilever bigger and heavier.

OTOH, that AT-3MONO/LP cart is HOMC with 1.2mV output, plenty for  my MM input. It has a conical stylus, which (in my experience) is evidently wide enough (.60 mil) to work well with mono pressings on both sides of 1962.

If you want a fancier Audio Technica, there's the AT33MONO, which is an LOMC (0.35mV) with slightly wider (.65mil) conical stylus. 

I don't really care if the specs allow for some vertical crosstalk. When I lower the needle of my *stereo* cartridge (using the damped cueing lever), there is a loud THUMP! When I lower the needle with my AT-MONO3/LP, its landing is TOTALLY INAUDIBLE. If it's inaudible during a severe vertical modulation with no horizontal modulation to obscure it, then it's not going to contribute anything of note when all the groove modulations are in the horizontal plane.  

It's a really good cartridge for a ridiculous price, and the AT33MONO is even better, as it should be.

A true mono cartridge, which has only one coil, can have vertical compliance without generating any noise as a result, if there is no mechanism to transduce vertical movement into an audio signal.

My point exactly. Vertical compliance by itself does not disqualify a cartridge from being "true mono."

Another issue, I much prefer 2-channel mono over the idea of using only one of two speakers when listening to mono. Old habits die hard, I guess. But this is why I personally have no interest in ancient true mono, 2-pin cartridges from the 50s. (While I am a big proponent of vintage stereo cartridges.)

No argument here! I *love* mono played through two speakers, esp. with my Maggie dipoles which energize the entire room. It's also a great way for tuning the system. If your mono signal is dead center between the speakers and you get a sense of depth, you're on the right track.

lopscri wrote:

An answer to my original question ?   Buelller........Bueller.......

Maybe you should write some vintage enthusiasts, such as Art Dudley w/Stereophile. You need someone really familar with old mono carts, which isn't exactly mainstream, even for vinyl enthusiast audiophiles, evidently. I'm a bit of an anachronism myself--big band enthusiast since 1965, grew up in a house with a big tube Zenith radio/78 rpm record player. I'm 63, have been at audio since I was 18. My phono stage and line stage are both PTP hand-wired all-tube units. I have at least 80 mono LPs ranging from the '50s (Belafonte's "Calypso", RCA Ortho-phonics, etc.) to originals from the '60s to Prestige and Riverside mono jazz reissues.

And yet I have absolutely no knowledge of pre-1962 mono cartridges.