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Full mono cartridge

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Muso1

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Does anyone make a FULL MONO cartridge with a 1ml ELLIPTICAL stylus for playing later LP's?
I do have a new (Stereo) Ortofon Quintet black S, AND, a Grado ME+ elliptical mono.
I have not fitted them yet, due to (sadly), un-foreseen circumstances. Also, from being in the audio business for decades, I have quite a range of (old), tone-arms & T/T's, so I'm interested in what arms, from my (rather unusual!!), list below.

I have an LP12 with a Fidelity Research T/arm, - (convenient for swapping carts), & a Linn Axis, - (not impressed re auto running after each power failure??), with a Basik LVX arm / Coral 777Ex cart.
Other ams arms are a long Ortofon RMG-309 - (no anti-skate), an Ortofon short curved arm from the 50's with antiskate, - ( with a Sugden T/T), an SME 3012 & a Formula 4 unipivot.
Also I have a couple of, - (I think rather nice for their soft suspension), Philips electronic Turntables, & a Dual 2019.

I'm mainly interested in Classical Mono lp's in VG condition from my father's collection, Decca, Mercury, RCA, Phillips, Erato & DGG.
These were mainly played originally on an Elac mag. mono cartridge & obviously carry a lot of happy memories.

Suggestion re the above "conglommeration", - particularly the Grado, appreciated.
Thanks.
 
I have absolutely no ideas for an answer to your question ... but I'd like to say, "Welcome to ASR!" ;)
 
Bought, tested and sold shortly after, having practically no mono vinyl, apart from an old and very ruined small collection, practically unusable.
My experience:
I had a Denon DL102. Particular result, used with a stereo system. Basically I had the exact same output for each speaker. So a double mono. Note that the Denon is not a difficult head, some mono tend to ruin the stereo vinyl record, because they only read the right and left movements. . The DL102 is instead designed not to have this problem. Another aspect is the connections, it only has 2. Also I loaded it like a normal MM even though it is MC.
 
I don't know either but I think converting to mono electronically or digitally will give you the same result (i.e. if your stereo has a "mono" button). (Except for the normal frequency response difference with different cartridges.) In fact, a "mono" cartridge is probably mixing electrically since I assume it still has left & right connections.

If you play it in stereo the noise will be different in the left & right channels and it will probably sound better in true-mono or "dual mono". Blending the uncorrelated noise from both "channels" gives you a 3dB improvement in signal-to-noise (compared to one "channel" alone), no matter how it's done.

If you are digitizing, recording in stereo can be an advantage. The clicks & pops are usually different in the left & right channels (or there is often a short time-offset). Wave Repair has several click & pop repair options and one of the options/methods allows you to copy from the good channel to the bad channel. It generally works well on stereo records because you don't notice the loss of stereo for a few milliseconds. With a mono record it can be perfect!
 
DVDdoug said:
I don't know either but I think converting to mono electronically or digitally will give you the same result (i.e. if your stereo has a "mono" button). (Except for the normal frequency response difference with different cartridges.) In fact, a "mono" cartridge is probably mixing electrically since I assume it still has left & right connections.

If you play it in stereo the noise will be different in the left & right channels and it will probably sound better in true-mono or "dual mono". Blending the uncorrelated noise from both "channels" gives you a 3dB improvement in signal-to-noise (compared to one "channel" alone), no matter how it's done.

If you are digitizing, recording in stereo can be an advantage. The clicks & pops are usually different in the left & right channels (or there is often a short time-offset). Wave Repair has several click & pop repair options and one of the options/methods allows you to copy from the good channel to the bad channel. It generally works well on stereo records because you don't notice the loss of stereo for a few milliseconds. With a mono record it can be perfect!
Click to expand...
Thanks Doug.
There is a difference as stereo carts have both lateral & vertical compliance, - (45/45), where true mono carts don't need vertical compliance, so noise from ticks & pops should be lower.
Regards,
M.
 
For the reasons DVDDoug lists, I personally have no use for a mono cartridge. There are preamps out there that sum to mono, some even containing a channel blend knob for optimal playback. Summing at the cartridge level is unwise from an engineering perspective. As a collector who digitizes, I transfer everything in stereo and do the summing, blending, phase alignment, and declicking in software. I've transferred many records where one channel was in much worse condition than the other, and a careful blend resulted in much greater signal-to-noise results.
 
Muso1 said:
Does anyone make a FULL MONO cartridge with a 1ml ELLIPTICAL stylus for playing later LP's?
I do have a new (Stereo) Ortofon Quintet black S, AND, a Grado ME+ elliptical mono.
I have not fitted them yet, due to (sadly), un-foreseen circumstances. Also, from being in the audio business for decades, I have quite a range of (old), tone-arms & T/T's, so I'm interested in what arms, from my (rather unusual!!), list below.

I have an LP12 with a Fidelity Research T/arm, - (convenient for swapping carts), & a Linn Axis, - (not impressed re auto running after each power failure??), with a Basik LVX arm / Coral 777Ex cart.
Other ams arms are a long Ortofon RMG-309 - (no anti-skate), an Ortofon short curved arm from the 50's with antiskate, - ( with a Sugden T/T), an SME 3012 & a Formula 4 unipivot.
Also I have a couple of, - (I think rather nice for their soft suspension), Philips electronic Turntables, & a Dual 2019.

I'm mainly interested in Classical Mono lp's in VG condition from my father's collection, Decca, Mercury, RCA, Phillips, Erato & DGG.
These were mainly played originally on an Elac mag. mono cartridge & obviously carry a lot of happy memories.

Suggestion re the above "conglommeration", - particularly the Grado, appreciated.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
They're (probably) pretty rare in the sense that most of them made today probably, at the least, have normal vertical compliance -- which is a very good thing if one accidentally or otherwise plays a "modern" (45 degree) stereo recording with a mono cartridge!;)
True mono cartridge/stylus assemblies of old had zero or very little vertical compliance, as none was needed and no value would be added by any vertical motion of the stylus transducing a monaural groove.

This being said, and last I knew, Ortofon makes a mono version of the SPU. My guess would be that it is, or at least might well be, true mono -- but I dunno and I am fairly lazy (i.e., not going to go digging around on line to check), sorry! ;)
 
if you can try ...clement cartdrige with dedicated arm... ;-)
(a historic and quite famous solution)
 
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