Post by montesquieu on Jun 17, 2020 19:50:40 GMT
Tough choices for an upcoming purchase require me to part with my Miyajima Zero 1.0mil mono cartridge. This was bought new in the UK by Petrat from AoS around 2 years ago, and sold to me about a year ago only having been used for 100 sides or so. It’s probably had 200 sides played in its time with me so is effectively still in pristine condition (400 hours tops). It’s one of the best mono cartridges out there – have a look at the various reviews and the posts on the Miyajima, Timestep and Ammonite Audio sites if you need more info.
The main benefit of a dedicated single coil 'real' mono cartridge is that it only moves and picks up signal in the horizontal plane, not only does it not reproduce noise embedded in the vertical plane used for stereo recordings, it can’t even detect it. This delivers a quietness and a musical coherence when reproducing mono records that simply isn’t available when using a stereo cartridge, even one notionally far more expensive. I have demonstrated this many times in my setup here.
Current retail is £1750, I am selling this for £985 including RMSD.
Also selling the matching ETR-Mono step-up transformer. I have been using this with my Miyajima mono cartriges, but I have used it previously with any number of other mono cartridges and it handles them all really well. My next favourite mono cartridge after the Miyajimas is the My Sonic Lab Eminent Solo, but this is also suitable for from Lyra, Koetsu, Ikeda, and Audio Technica mono cartridges, as well as some from Ortofon. It has a 'pass' function allowing it to be bypassed where required, eg for some high output MC Ortofon SPU mono cartridges that can be run directly into MM inputs.
The Miyajima ETR-Mono is something of a Swiss Army knife of step-ups, having four input coil taps on the primary coil, four output taps on the secondary, and four available loading resistor options, plus pass for 47k ohms, giving the option of 80 individual configurations.
This all sounds complicated, but in fact it’s quite straightforward to set. Input settings on the primary coil (showing number of turns) are are determined by the coil impedance of the cartridge to be used:
80 2-5 Ω
120 6-12 Ω (best suited for the Zero)
160 12-20 Ω
200 20-40 Ω
Matching these with the secondary output provide a huge variety of gain settings suitable for a phono stage and preamp combination of all sort of different gain structures:
1:9
1:11.3
1:12.0
1:5
1:18
1:20
1:22.5
1:25
1:30 (ideal match for the Zero in most setups, though other gain settings can be used)
1:37.5
1:45
Made available because I'm consolidating on my new two-input Allnic HA5000 head amp, which is the natural partner to my Allnic H7000V phono stage - though I have to say I have some misgivings about moving on from the ETR-Mono.
The ETR-Mono was purchased though the Miyajima UK dealer network (from Ammonite Audio - who I can thoroughly recommend - Hugo is one of the very very few dealers out there who understands mono properly) and comes in the original box with paperwork. Current price is £1395, I’m looking for £875 for this including the courier charge. No pickup unfortunately at this time. It's pictured on the right. The ETR-Stereo may also be avaialble at a future date.
Happy to offer a discount of £100 for the pair – SUT and cartridge – and free shipping, for a total price of £1760 – less than the price of just the cartridge.
Finally, to complete the picture I am also offering my Esoteric Re-Equalizer, plus Longdog Audio linear PSU. This sits either after the phono stage (bypassable), or in the preamp tape loop (engaged by selecting tape monitoring) and provides the ability to adjust for any of hundreds of different equalisations for LPs and 78s that were in use prior to the RIAA curve becoming established as the industry standard in the late 1950s. I have had this for a decade but no longer need it as my Allnic H7000V phono stage has equalisation available as standard. £300 plus £10 RMSD. Shortened and built into a small box for me by Speedysteve of Magna Audio (it was originally a rack mount component and pretty inconvenient to house).
The main benefit of a dedicated single coil 'real' mono cartridge is that it only moves and picks up signal in the horizontal plane, not only does it not reproduce noise embedded in the vertical plane used for stereo recordings, it can’t even detect it. This delivers a quietness and a musical coherence when reproducing mono records that simply isn’t available when using a stereo cartridge, even one notionally far more expensive. I have demonstrated this many times in my setup here.
Current retail is £1750, I am selling this for £985 including RMSD.
Also selling the matching ETR-Mono step-up transformer. I have been using this with my Miyajima mono cartriges, but I have used it previously with any number of other mono cartridges and it handles them all really well. My next favourite mono cartridge after the Miyajimas is the My Sonic Lab Eminent Solo, but this is also suitable for from Lyra, Koetsu, Ikeda, and Audio Technica mono cartridges, as well as some from Ortofon. It has a 'pass' function allowing it to be bypassed where required, eg for some high output MC Ortofon SPU mono cartridges that can be run directly into MM inputs.
The Miyajima ETR-Mono is something of a Swiss Army knife of step-ups, having four input coil taps on the primary coil, four output taps on the secondary, and four available loading resistor options, plus pass for 47k ohms, giving the option of 80 individual configurations.
This all sounds complicated, but in fact it’s quite straightforward to set. Input settings on the primary coil (showing number of turns) are are determined by the coil impedance of the cartridge to be used:
80 2-5 Ω
120 6-12 Ω (best suited for the Zero)
160 12-20 Ω
200 20-40 Ω
Matching these with the secondary output provide a huge variety of gain settings suitable for a phono stage and preamp combination of all sort of different gain structures:
1:9
1:11.3
1:12.0
1:5
1:18
1:20
1:22.5
1:25
1:30 (ideal match for the Zero in most setups, though other gain settings can be used)
1:37.5
1:45
Made available because I'm consolidating on my new two-input Allnic HA5000 head amp, which is the natural partner to my Allnic H7000V phono stage - though I have to say I have some misgivings about moving on from the ETR-Mono.
The ETR-Mono was purchased though the Miyajima UK dealer network (from Ammonite Audio - who I can thoroughly recommend - Hugo is one of the very very few dealers out there who understands mono properly) and comes in the original box with paperwork. Current price is £1395, I’m looking for £875 for this including the courier charge. No pickup unfortunately at this time. It's pictured on the right. The ETR-Stereo may also be avaialble at a future date.
Happy to offer a discount of £100 for the pair – SUT and cartridge – and free shipping, for a total price of £1760 – less than the price of just the cartridge.
Finally, to complete the picture I am also offering my Esoteric Re-Equalizer, plus Longdog Audio linear PSU. This sits either after the phono stage (bypassable), or in the preamp tape loop (engaged by selecting tape monitoring) and provides the ability to adjust for any of hundreds of different equalisations for LPs and 78s that were in use prior to the RIAA curve becoming established as the industry standard in the late 1950s. I have had this for a decade but no longer need it as my Allnic H7000V phono stage has equalisation available as standard. £300 plus £10 RMSD. Shortened and built into a small box for me by Speedysteve of Magna Audio (it was originally a rack mount component and pretty inconvenient to house).
