New Mono: Trying To Decide Between Trying Ortofon Quintet and 2M SE

Well, I've put 30+ hours on the Ortofon Quintet Mono cartridge. To get an idea how it's sounding I just need to say it has not left my turntable since it arrived! Right out of the box I was impressed with the smooth, full and detailed sound. Much better than just using the mono switch on my C2300 with a stereo cartridge. There is a definite improvement on vocals standing out from the music. And the same with the instruments for both rock and jazz.
I have it set at 2.4 G vertical tracking force which is .1 over the recommended setting of 2.3.

Here is a sample of some of the mono LPs I've listened to:

Beatles Mono box - White Album and Rubber Soul sound fantastic to me. Better than ever.
Bill Evans at Town Hall - Full, full piano from the Master.
Stones 60's set (not the new one) - Brian Jones and co. sound great in mono again.
The Animals EPs from Record Store Day - wow! The electric guitars are in the room.
Frank Sinatra Come Dance With Me original mono - Vocals are an eye opener on an album I never really appreciated until now. Looking forward to more Sinatra on mono.
Stan Getz: Plays, and Cool Velvet - If you love Stan, you need to hear him in real mono.
Duke Ellington Masterpieces (AP remaster) - one of the best sounding jazz LPs ever got even better.
New Beach Boys releases - again, an example of something that sounded great actually getting better.
Analogue Productions 45 RPM Verve set - a few of these are mono and sound great. Billie Holiday Body and Soul and All or Nothing at All, and Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald are more exceptional now.

There are many more - I could go on and on. I have around 350 mono LPs in all and will now be looking for more.

I highly recommend this cartridge. It's worth having a 2nd tonearm to allow for easy switching between the mono cartridge and the stereo one.

 

Congrats on going mono! I have not heard the Quintet Mono but I have been loving my mono setup with the Cadenza Mono for over 18 months now. I'm fortunate that my table allows the addition of a second setup and there are many, many times I've preferred the Rega / Cadenza setup to my Spacearm / DV XX2 stereo setup.

If you like that Ellington, the Analog Spark reissue of Ellington Uptown is unreal. A special red vinyl version is available at Barnes and Noble as well.

 

I'll check the Duke lp out! Thanks.

 

Teag, I have the Quintet Mono, but am trying to decide on a phono stage to pair it with. I tried pairing it with my stereo cartridge's phono stage, but had a ground loop hum. I ended up needing to only plug in one side, then using a Y-cable out of the phono stage. Now I'm looking to pair it with it's own dedicated phono stage. What have you paired it with? What do you recommend, etc.?
Thank you for any feedback!

 

I'm not teag, but the Quintet Mono is a pretty low output cartridge. I assume that above you meant your stereo amp's phono stage. What is the gain of the phono stage? I'd say you need a moving coil phono stage with a gain of at least 50dB to work with the Quintet Mono.

Teag can certainly chime in with what she uses.

I don't know the rest of your system, your tastes in music, and your budget. With less expensive phono stages (<$1500 or so), they'll tend to be better in some areas than others. One may emphasize quickness and rhythm, another better at fleshing out harmonic richness and bloom.

 

AnalogJ: thank you for the line. I use a Rogue Ares preamp for my stereo cartridge (ortofon cadenza red) connected to a Line Magnetic 216 integrated amp. I'm looking for someone who has specific experience with the Quintet Mono as it causes a ground loop hum with some phono preamps such as the Rogue Ares (unless using a y-cable hook-up, see below). I'm just looking for a phono preamp suggestion that has actually been used with a Quintet Mono--ideally one that does not require the y-cable hook-up solution, under $1500. I mostly listen to classical chamber music.

 

The Denon is different than most other modern mono carts because it is a single coil (moving coil) design. The only other modern mono carts I know of that are single coil are the Ortofon CG25 and CG65, and unlike the DL-102, the Ortofons I just named have no vertical compliance, so they are even closer to the design of an authentic vintage mono cart (I have an email from Louis Dorio, a very knowledgable contact at Ortofon, explaining all of this...happy to share through PM).

The way it has been explained to me, when a manufacturer talks about having a "true mono" cartridge, in almost every case they mean that the cartridge has two coils realigned from the typical 45-degree angles with the horizontal plane (like an upside-down "V") to be perpendicular to the horizontal (an upside-down "L" orientation). My understanding is that with a moving magnet design, this makes it so the coils do not react (or react very little) to the vertical movements of the magnet, and the same result is achieved with a moving coil design but the other way around, with the coils on the cantilever while the magnet is stationary.

It's funny because as much as I hear people talk about companies simply "strapping" the wiring of a stereo cart--which I believe is meant to imply that the stereo signal is summed to mono internally opposed to realigning a dual-coil configuration--I do not know of any halfway decent mono carts being made this way. Even the least expensive moving magnet mono carts on the market made by Grado aren't made this way (link: My dialogue with Grado re: their mono carts ). (I haven't had or read any correspondence with Audio-Technica about their mono carts, they may make an even less expensive MM mono cart.)

Another thing to consider is that Lyra engineer Jonathan Carr has explained to us that using a single-coil cart in a stereo signal chain has greater potential to produce hum (link: One More Time: "True Mono" Carts vs. Mono Buttons/Y-Cables ).

What I think this all means is that with the exception of the few single-coil designs I mentioned above, the vast majority of modern mono carts are 'realigned' dual-coil, but I think it's ok to still call them 'true mono' because the coils/magnets are no longer responding to the vertical motions of the cantilever, and as Carr has explained, the dual coils are better for a modern stereo signal chain anyway. So I think everyone should be happy with their modern mono carts.

PS: I wrote an article on the topic on my blog here (link: Mono Vinyl Playback on a Modern Stereo Audio System ). I intentionally avoided the issue of coil alignment and number of coils because I came to the conclusion that all the modern options (including summing!) produce great results. Note that I also had an insightful exchange with Hoffman forum member "rl1856" in the comments section at the bottom of my article.

 

I'll take a look at your blog and I agree that all approaches can produce good sound, but personally I chose a Miyajima which is a "true" mono design in the historical sense and the results suggest it's possibly the best approach. I do believe that the cartridge manufacturers need to be a lot more open about how their mono carts are designed and made so customers can make a more informed choice and people like us can perhaps make more informed decisions about which design approach works best. With the strong renewed interest in mono playback we can but hope for someone to conduct an in depth shootout between current options from Denon, Audio Technica, Lyra, Ortofon and Miyajima playing both vintage and modern mono pressings as well as proper information on the way each cart is designed to tackle the job.

I read and enjoyed the blog post, I'll just add that I agree that there isn't a 1960 cutoff date for pressings that favour a 1 mil stylus, the switch to 0.7 definitely seems to have been somewhat fluid depending on label, plant and country.

 

I have only used the Quintet Mono with my McIntosh c2300 Preamp. After more than a year, my review above still stands - it sounds great! Good luck in your search for a dedicated phono stage - let us know how it turns out.

 

In the article I recommend playing it safe with a 0.7-mil stylus for records pressed after 1960, but honestly I don't see any reason why a particular mastering house/engineer would have completely abandoned their dedicated 1-mil mono cutting head so long as the majority of labels were still releasing albums in both mono and stereo--something that happened until the late '60s to my knowledge.

 

Excluding reissues the latest mono Jazz album I have is the Alan Davie Music Workshop from 1970, it's a mono recording and was cut by an independent mastering engineer called John Hassell, I bet he was the kind of guy who didn't spend money on a new cutting head unless he had to, he operated out of his house and went on to become the go to person for independent UK Reggae producers and sound system operators and there may be some mono cuts among those jobs, when I finally get a 0.7 Miyajima I'll add the Davie to the comparison list.