Nagaoka MP-500
I know that this one has been long awaited! With the yen so low, I decided to finally purchase one through CDJapan last month.
According to the Hi-Fi News review of this cartridge, "
The flagship of Nagaoka's 'Moving Permalloy' range can trace its lineage back to ADC's 10E pick-up from 1964."
From the measurements done by Miller Audio Research in that same review, we notice something a bit peculiar about its frequency response. It shows a gradual peak from 1 to 6 kHz, followed by a fairly drastic slope downward that reaches -7 dB at 20 kHz!
There are some other measurements floating around which show a similar phenomenon, as well as older Nagaoka measurements that do not.
What does the Nagaoka MP-500 as sold today's frequency response look like?
Here are some graphs showing measurements I've taken with a couple of different turntable, tonearm, and phono preamp combinations, along with some variations in azimuth, VTF (2g is a typo, it is actually 1.8), and VTA:
I would call that extremely flat! No sharp downward slope to be seen here. Likely one of the flattest cartridges available for purchase new today.
Distortion is a little high compared to the best we've seen, but it's not bad.
The MP-500 tracked beautifully on the Ortofon test record, only mistracking at the highest 100 µm test track, IIRC. Even this could possibly be ameliorated with more precise setup.
The compliance is almost certainly higher than indicated, as I get a resonance of ~5 Hz on the EPA-100 and ~6 Hz on the EPA-A250.
I still need to test it on an A501H with a phono stage that doesn't have an always-on subsonic filter.
So, what explains the totally different frequency response shown in other measurements? A production change? (possible) Unit-to-unit variation? (doubtful)
I certainly don't know!
One strange phenomenon I did experience on both turntables is an occasional, seemingly random, and very disconcerting sounding static discharge. A quick Google search will show that this has been reported by a number of people across the Nagaoka line of cartridges.
Someone responded to me on another forum that it is caused by static building up in the generator, and can be prevented by occasionally putting a drop of anti-static fluid or stylus cleaner onto the cantilever. I have not tried that myself, and, as always, YMMV.
All in all, I am very glad I decided to buy this cartridge to test, and am quite impressed with it!