If you're looking to breathe new life into your turntable, Audio-Technica might have just the thing.
It's announced a raft of new cartridges and other accessories that promise to elevate your vinyl listening experience. Let's see what's new.
First, the cartridges. The AT33x dual moving coil phono cartridges have a host of sonic and engineering upgrades over the previous AT33 Series.
The five-strong line-up includes two mono cartridges (for those listening to LPs mixed in a single channel), which claim to be unaffected by vertical noise components picked up from the record groove.
All five models have Audio-Technica's dual moving coil structure with independent left and right coils for the stereo units, providing distinct channel separation, along with a sound that's "dynamic yet delicate and refined" according to Audio-Technica.
All models are hand-crafted in Japan, and have threaded mounting holes for easier installation. Their composite cartridge bodies are made of die-cast zinc, aluminium and high-rigidity polymer.
The cartridge base is made from rigid die-cast zinc to help resonance suppression, and make the bass and midrange clearer.
The new cartridges use PCOCC (pure copper by Ohno continuous casting) and gold-plated cartridge pins, and they have either neodymium or samarium cobalt high-strength magnets.
You can use each with a variety of tonearms too, thanks to the newly developed suspension and rubber damper design, which has a lower compliance than Audio-Technica's other cartridges.
The new cartidges are:
- AT33xMLB: microlinear nude stylus, solid boron tapered cantilever – £699 / $899 (around AU$1400)
- AT33xMLD: microlinear nude stylus, duralumin tapered pipe cantilever – £599 / $799 (AU$1200)
- AT33xEN: 0.3 x 0.7 mil elliptical nude stylus, duralumin tapered pipe cantilever – £519 / $699 (around AU$1000)
- AT33xMONO/I: mono, 0.65 mil conical nude stylus, duralumin pipe cantilever – £479 / $649 (around AU$1075)
- AT33xMONO/II: mono, 0.65 mil conical nude stylus, duralumin pipe cantilever – £349 / $449 (around AU$690)
The company has announced a range of turntable accessories, too. These include two new slipmats (one made of cork and rubber, and one just of rubber), two cartridge alignment tools and a stainless-steel disc stabiliser. Prices start at $14 (around £11 / AU$22).
There are also new AT-ST3 Speaker Stands, made from rigid alloy steel with vibration-damping cork feet. They cost $59 (around £44 / AU$91).
If your turntable needs some love, the above might be worth checking out. They're all much cheaper than buying a new model, but if you do want a more serious upgrade, consult our list of the best turntables.
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