Notice That There Are Not Many Survivors of the MC from the early 19080's or so?
Every once in awhile I will see an odd Audioquest 404 for sale. But otherwise not too many cartridges from this generation. I have always wondered about whatever happened to the Sumiko SHO cartridges. Were they the predecessor to the Blue Point or the Blackbird? Always wondered how they sounded, never got to hear one.
I wonder if it is the use of the hollow rod cantilevers that caused them to become lost cartridges. I don't think you could retip them, but the best you could do is trade them in for a discount.
The other cartridge I see from time to time are the Shinon, and every once in a great while I will see one come up for sale. Oh an odd Ortofon or two, and that is about all I remember for this era of moving coils ever coming available.
I was one of the owners of Shinon. I tested every cartridge that went out overnight on a Yamaha linear tracking turntable. I have a Shinon Red still sitting in the head shell on that Yamaha. Before we made the Red I loved the 103D on a Mission 774 on an Oracle Turtable. |
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I have an Adcom cartridge that came on a table I bought some time ago.
https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/gallery/image/18627/source |
Probably the biggest reason there are so few early MC cartridges is that relatively few were made compared to MM cartridges back then. Even now, I am sure many more MM cartridges are made than MC ones. Also, the high cost of refurbishing the cartridges made it less likely that a worn cartridge was retained. They were either discarded or traded in to the manufacturer. |
I believe it’s a MC but there are no identifying marks on it. I play it through my Musical Fidelity Phone pre set to MC and it sounds wonderful. it looks like the one in the link below