Miyajima Kotetu 78

Product Code: MJC008/78

£479.17

ex-vat: £ 479.17

Noriyuki Miyajima has been producing extraordinary artisanal cartridges for decades. His designs, which feature an ingenious cross-coil moving coil generator and damping system, produce a full-bodied, supremely musical sound that recalls vintage audio systems, but with the high resolution and articulate frequency extremes of the finest modern cartridges. All Miyajima cartridges are low-compliance, and therefore suitable for high- and medium-mass tonearms, like the Thomas Schick and some of Frank Schröder’s designs.

The Miyajima Kotetu 78 is the company’s basic model for playing 78 RPM discs, with a 3 mil conical stylus.

Press Reviews

“Playing the low cost design, the Kotetu, the most immediate feature of this mono cartridge was a quite shocking degree of clarity. I never heard it, until I installed the Kotetu, but my standard, reference, stereo cartridge, the Benz Glider (£800 and played through the mono setting on my Icon PS3 phono amp) exhibited a disturbing noise that sat behind everything: vocals, bass, trumpets…the lot. This ‘busy’ signal blurred and interfered with the finer detail: things like the interpretation of the bass frequency, the timbre of the Crosby vocal and the location of the backing vocal. With the Kotetu, this bloom effect disappeared allowing the Crosby vocal to become more extended to the rear of the sound stage. Up until the installation of the mono cartridge, in fact, I felt that I had only been listening to the front half of the vocal. It’s a bit like raising your voice in a crowded pub, remove the crowd and the subtle aspects of the voice suddenly become apparent.” (review of LP mono cartridge)

Read the full review.

Paul Rigby, the Audiophile Man

“I put on a mono recording of Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue. My stereo copy is clearly a separate derivative from the master as it is very much ‘sax on the left, trumpet in the middle and drums on the right’! This mono recording, however, is a totally different experience, with all the instruments totally blended together and I get the feeling that all the performers are working as a team. The trumpet has a staggering clarity that somehow seems positioned more forward than the other instruments.” (review of LP mono cartridge)

Read the full review.

Hi-Fi Choice

Specs

Body material
Composite
Stylus
3 mil conical
Weight
8.8 g
Tracking force
3.0 to 4.5 g, 3.5 g recommended
Internal impedance
4 Ohms
Recommended load
100 Ohms
Output
About 0.5 mV
Compliance
About 8×10-6cm/dyne