Головки звукоснимателя — My Sonic Lab Signature Platinum

My Sonic Lab builds the Signature Platinum MC cartridge. The brand is the Japanese company founded in 2004 by cartridge designer Yoshio Matsudaira, who had earlier designed cartridges for Koetsu, Air Tight, Miyabi, Luxman, Supex and Audio Craft. It lists at USD 10,995 and builds on the Signature Gold, which uses a duralumin body and cantilever. It is usually made to order.

Key specs that matter

The stylus is a semi-line contact type with a 3 x 30 um profile, mounted on a boron pipe cantilever. The body is titanium hardened by a black ion plating process. Output is 0.5 mV at 1 kHz from an internal impedance of 1.4 ohm DCR, and recommended loading is 100 to 800 ohm, with about 400 ohm given as ideal. Compliance is 10 x 10-6 cm/dyne, or 10 um/mN, and tracking force 1.9 to 2.2 g. Frequency response runs from 10 Hz to 50 kHz, channel separation is above 30 dB at 1 kHz and channel balance within 0.5 dB at 1 kHz. My Sonic Lab gives the weight as 13 g, and the output pins are polished and rhodium plated.

Engineering and use context

The central idea in every My Sonic Lab cartridge is the SH-uX core, a magnetic material developed by Matsudaira with higher permeability and flux density than the iron usually found in moving-coil generators. With a neodymium magnet around this core, fewer coil turns give a usable output, which is why the internal impedance stays very low while the output remains usable. Boron is lighter and stiffer than the aluminium used for most cantilevers, and the ion-hardened titanium body adds rigidity. The design aims to cut signal loss, internal distortion and phase distortion in the generator.

Pairing

The body weight and moderate compliance point to a tonearm of medium effective mass, and the brand offers its own SH-1rh headshell of rhodium-plated hard-anodised aluminium alloy weighing 14 g. With its very low internal impedance the cartridge can drive a step-up transformer, or it can feed an active moving-coil phono stage with high gain and low input noise for its low output. The loading range is wide, so most phono stages with selectable loading can meet it.

Alternatives

The My Sonic Lab Ultra Eminent EX pairs a boron cantilever with an A7075 duralumin body and gives 0.3 mV from 0.6 ohm.