Cartridge Reviews

In a recent issue of Stereophile, Analog Corner covered a number of products including two very expensive cartridges: the Transfiguration Proteus D ($10,500) and the Kuzma CAR-60 ($12,995). Both feature diamond cantilevers but that doesn't mean they sound at all alike.

Here are two great, "reasonably" priced, superbly built cartridges that I've chosen to review together while giving you the opportunity to "hear" both!

California-based Triangle ART manufactures five gleaming chrome and gold plated high mass turntables as well as its own tone arm. The 'tables weigh from 40 to 850 pounds. Recently, Triangle ART introduced the Zeus MC phono cartridge, thus completing mechanical part of the analog playback.

The $2995 Lyra Kleos Cartridge was billed back in 2010 as a replacement for the Helikon. The Kleos is a much better sounding cartridge in every way. It maintains and actually ups the Helikon’s detail resolution, while adding the more expensive Skala’s smoothness and midband warmth.

I reviewed the Transfiguration Phoenix for Stereophile five years ago. This is not really the same cartridge though it retains the same name. In 2012 the low output moving coil cartridge was updated to include larger gauge pure silver coil wire wound on the square permalloy core used on the now discontinued top of the line Transfiguration Orpheus. The revised Phoenix also shares the Orpheus's damping system and uses a variant of the Orpheus's yoke less, double ring magnet technology featuring a powerful neodymium ring in the rear and a samarium cobalt one in front.

The moving coil cartridge advantage comes in great part due to its far lower moving mass. A relatively light-weight coil moves and reacts faster than a far heavier magnet. The lighter the coil, the less the mass.

Over the past few years, thanks to improved magnets and coil and former materials as well as how they are implemented, designers have found ways to increase output efficiency. Thus fewer turns of wire are required to produce a given voltage output.