Why Does This Obscure Brand Dominate the Turntable Market?

Turntable producers are likely to make each a part of the turntable themselves — the plinth, the motor, the tonearm and the platter. There is, nevertheless, usually a notable exception for what’s arguably a turntable’s most vital element: the phono cartridge. While some corporations, like Audio Technica and Cambridge Audio, do get into the cartridge enterprise, many extra together with Pro-Ject, Fluance and U-Turn, have chosen to companion with Ortofon. Pro-Ject’s hottest turntable, the , comes with an Ortofon cartridge. So too does each turntable in Fluance’s Reference line.

So, what’s the deal? Why don’t extra turntable manufactures make their very own phono cartridges? And what makes Ortofon cartridges so particular?

What makes Ortofon cartridges so particular?

One of Ortofon’s largest strengths is that it’s by no means new to the sport. Founded over 100 years in the past in 1918 by two Danish audio engineers, Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen, the corporate developed one of many first synchronized sound movie methods and serving to to usher in an period of music and dialog. According to Louis Dorio, the product specialist at Ortofon, it was after World War 2 when the corporate turned primarily involved with producing document manufacturing and playback tools, like document reducing heads and reducing amplifiers used within the mastering course of.

“Ortofon developed the primary reducing head that would truly provide vast frequency response, the way in which we take heed to music at this time,” stated Dorio. “Of course, on the time, listeners couldn’t make use of those new HiFi records with no new cartridge, so the pure factor to do was develop cartridges that would fulfill the calls for of the brand new recordings.”

The first Ortofon cartridge was a shifting coil cartridge, the MC Mono-A cartridge, and it was developed by Holger Christian Arenstein in 1948. Since then, Ortofon has been a fixture within the hi-fi world, manufacturing every part tonearms to cables, however they’re nonetheless finest identified for the over 50 cartridge fashions they make.