SOUNDSMITH PHONO CARTIRDGES
High End Analog Performance Starting at $250

For the last 15 years a genius cartridge designer in upstate NY has been quietly turning out world-class cartridges. The first one we heard, the SMMC-2, thoroughly trounced Pierre's beloved $2500 Lyra. We've spent the year since then evaluating the rest of Peter Lederman’s line. Same results: both at the low end and at the high end, his SoundSmith cartridges typically beat superb cartridges costing 3 to 5 times as much. That includes Dynavector, Ortofon, Benz, Clearaudio, Sumiko, Grado, Denon, Koetsu, Van den Hul, Shelter, Zyx and Lyra. What makes SoundSmiths so dominant? Three unique features (plus a myriad of devil’s details):

• Tiny moving iron (fixed magnet and fixed coil) design leads to much lighter moving mass than any moving coil. Thus, a faster, more transparent sound—but with that special solidity, warmth, and treble ease (and high output) of moving magnets, due to the same large, rigidly mounted coils that moving magnets enjoy.

• Ultra-small outer body structure, half the size of standard moving coil enclosures, increases body stiffness seven-fold and decreases resonance amplitudes by 85%.

• Ruby/sapphire cantilever, a material selected by ear to sound notably better than the boron cantilever selected by engineering formula for most megabuck cartridges.

We recommend our customers use high compliance SoundSmith cartridges even if you have a relatively heavy tone arm. By direct listening comparison, their high compliance cartridges sound better than the medium compiance regardless of tone arm weight. We are well-aware of the 50-year-old theory that heavier tone arms need lower compiance cartridges (i.e. stiffer suspensions) in order to keep tone arm resonances between 7 and 11 hz. Our careful listening experiments show this theory to be completely wrong. Lowering the arm resonance yeilds cleaner, deeper bass, or transparent mid-range, and even extends the treble.

We also recommend that you select the 400pf capacidence option (even though SoundSmith offers a 100pf version). Just as in the case of cartridge compliance, our experiements show that the 400pf cartridge sounds better. We also recommend, if your phono stage has capacitace loading options, that you use the lowest possible capacitance -- zero if possible. Extra capacitative loading smears the sound of the midrange and treble. This is due to extra dialectric absorbtion and has nothing to do with the supposed frequency response rise in the treble when the cartridge treble is alledgedly equalized by extra capacitance.

We offer the full line of SoundSmith cartridges and options, many of which are listed below. Please call (410)867-7543 for additional options.


Warranty and Service
Soundsmith cartridges are non-refundable items which require prepayment. Limited warranty and service is provided by the manufacturer. To ensure their exceptional quality, all SoundSmith cartridges are handmade to order and take 7-14 business days to ship. Please note, the manufacturers’ prices are subject to change without notice.