Anywhere from 200 to 2000 hours, depending on the cartridge design and stylus profile. I’ve written more about this in my cartridge inspection and cleaning deep dive, but the increased contact area of line contact gems, found in more expensive cartridges, reduces contact pressure, leading to less friction, lower wear and better sound. Line-contact types […]

Without getting too technical, as a cartridge mounted to a radially tracking tonearm moves across the record, playback distortion characteristics change with changing tracking error. Generally, the highest distortion is found playing the innermost grooves of a record. There will be two points with the lowest distortion, where the radial arc traced by the arm

Because in order to faithfully amplify the minuscule signals generated by a phono cartridge, they must have the highest precision and lowest noise of any amplifier in your system. It’s no mean feat to take a 0.3mV signal and amplify it to the level needed by a regular line-level preamplifier. One millivolt or 1mV is

Sure, but only if you understand the inescapable relationship between price and performance, which is especially obvious with ‘small signal’ audio, like vinyl. There is enormous variation among phono preamplifiers, and sound technical reasons why the best phono preamps, ie not Cambridge Audio, Gold Note, NAD, Pro-Ject, etc, are genuinely expensive. The quality of parts,