Songbird
The Songbird comes in at a much needed price point perfect for launching the part-time audiophile into some serious listening. As its name suggests, this open-architecture moving coil cartridge excels at providing colorful and rich vocals, and highlights the powerful low and mid-end of funk and rock. The long 7-micron stylus face will handle different cutting angles well, and this cartridge is also great at providing some excitement to otherwise anemic classical system setups.
The Songbird builds upon the strengths of, and lessons learned from, the best-selling high-end cartridge in the world, The Blue Point Special. No aspect of the cartridge's design was left to chance. To avoid unwanted external resonance storage the conventional cartridge body was eliminated. This allowed for the construction of the most efficient path for evacuating internal resonance through the structure of the cartridge directly into the tonearm. This low mechanical impedance mounting system, combined with the optimization of mass, provides the perfect environment for the carefully chosen working elements of the cartridge.
The coated aluminum cantilever chosen for the Songbird provides excellent energy transfer from the stylus to the coils.
Suspension Design
Virtually all conventional moving coils get by with a suspension element made from a butyl material. For the Songbird, we chose to use a synthetic rubber where the hardness (10 degrees) and repulsion factor (8%) of the
material can be tightly controlled with molding temperature, cure time, and skin tension. Additionally, with this synthetic material, the specified parameters of the suspension are held to design tolerance for a longer period of time. These steps help insure the cartridge will perform as designed for a longer period of time, and will last considerably longer than other designs. The final result provides a combination of superior dynamics and excellent long term tracking ability.
Why an Elliptical Stylus Shape?
Your Songbird is fitted with a specially ground, low mass stylus, a design type where the inherent character is always musical. With care and precise adjustment, tremendous amounts of detail can be extracted from the Songbird. But unlike some designs, even if it is not adjusted within a gnat's whisker of perfection, your cartridge will still deliver an intensely musical experience.
Old World Craftsmanship
Each Songbird is painstakingly crafted by hand in a process that involves hours of labor. After assembly, final adjustments are made using a battery of test records, and performance is hand-calibrated. Each cartridge is subjected to this process and is critically auditioned before it is shipped. No computer or machine is yet capable of matching the precise adjustments necessary to extract the highest level of performance from a reference quality phono cartridge.
Technical Specifications:-
Cartridge Type:
Moving Coil
Stylus:
0.3 x 0.7 micron Elliptical
Cantilever Material:
coated aluminum pipe
Wire Material:
pure copper
Internal Impedance:
135 Ohms
Load Impedance:
47kΩ
Frequency Response:
12Hz - 40kHz
Output Voltage:
2.5mV
Channel Separation:
30dB @ 1kHz
Channel Balance:
< 0.5dB @ 1kHz
Compliance:
12x10-6 cm/dyn @ 100Hz
Recommended load capacitance:
100pF - 200pF
Vertical tracking angle:
20°
Tracking Force:
1.8g - 2.2g
Recommended Force:
2.0g
Cartridge Weight:
8.5g