I recently purchased a Pro-ject Classic turntable, which comes with an Ortofon 2M Silver cart. I have a few questions to anyone who has experience with this cartridge. I’ve only had the table for a few weeks, but so far I’m not happy with the sound. I’m finding the Ortofon to be too bright with a kind of gritty/fuzzy sounding treble. Is this normal for this cartridge? Should I give it more time to settle in? I didn’t have this problem with my last turntable, which was a NAD 533/Grado Platinum combo. So I don’t think it’s a system problem. The rest of my system is Rotel RC 1570 and RB 1070 pre amp and amp. And B&W 804 Nautilus speakers. Thanks in advance for any help/advice!
IIRC the 2M Silver is a 2M Red with upgraded internal wiring. Basically a gimmick that should only provide marginal, if any, performance gain over the horrible (IMHO) 2M Red cartridge. The 2M cartridges often run hotter than the manufacturer specs w/r/t to output and can cause some phono preamps to distort on hot peaks of music. The distortion you're hearing could be that or that plus the crappy bonded elliptical stylus not tracking that well, particularly at the inner grooves or highly dynamic passages.
I have a 2M Red, and it took 40-50 hours of play before it broke in. It sounded very bass shy and bright to me, at first. Right around that time frame, it opened up and sounded much better to me. Less harsh, and more full.
can you adjust the loading on your phono stage or pop in a 2M Blue stylus or do you have a MC input , UK version are fitted with the Quintet MC friend has one with quintet bronze
Thanks for the info, you nailed it. Brightness and distortion on dynamic peaks of music is exactly what I'm hearing. If I should be looking for a higher quality cartridge with a warmer sound do you have any recommendations? My budget is $300-$400. I did like the sound of the Grado Platinum that I had on my last table. Thanks!
Unfortunatley the phono stage is part of my pre amp so I can't make any adjustments. It is a MM cartridge and MM only phono stage
Coming from a 2M Blue (which I was happy with) I added a Nagaoka 110. I think you would be happy with this - warmer sounding. With your budget I think you may be able to step up to the 200.
If you like Grado, have at it. I think the prices on the wood bodied carts have increased over the last few years. I'm not much of a Grado fan at all but people seem to like them on lower mass arms. If that's your TT, might be worth a try if you know and like those cartridges. I prefer cartridges with a neutral sound and have high standards for tracking, so Grado doesn't fit that bill, and especially not at that price point. My 2 cents.
My Pro-Ject 1Xpression came with the 2M silver cart. Though it was supposed to be setup at the factory I found that my azimuth was way out of alignment. You might want to check your setup if you haven’t already.
It will only sound more distorted with time. You should be looking at finer styli options like the AT VM540.
Thanks for the info. My tone arm has an effective tonearm mass of 13,5 g, is that considered lower mass? I like Grado, but I'm open to anything that is not as bright as my Ortofon 2M silver.
The Nagaoka line is generally seen as on the softer side. Although youll need to go to the 500 for a finer stylus type, or retip one with a new profile. For me Grado is just too muffled, but there are lots of cartridges for each manufacturer all different. The Silver as said before is generally seen as the brightest of the 2M bunch however.
I'm not familiar with checking the azimuth, and don't have any tools to do so. I using a mirror and eyeballing it a good way to do it?
Thats quite hard to do, but luckily with the 2M silver being an Eliptical the Azimuth will not be very critical unless its way off. The importance for azimuth and other installations like SRA come with finer styli. Generally, the finer the styli, the more precise its installation needs to be to reach optimal playback.
I've adjusted the anti skate and that seemed to help a bit with the distortion I was hearing. The Classic comes with 3 notches and a weight on a wire to adjust. My dealer had it set at the first notch, I've since moved to the second and the now the third. Distortion seems better, but the sound is still too bright for my taste.
Anti Skate should indeed help a bit, although its a setting that can never be perfect. Fixed distortion on 1 records might increase some distortions on another. Im not familiar with the anti skate on the Projects although I know how they work. Usually people tend to put their anti skate too high from what I observe however, so if it means yours is lower now that is likely to be better overall.
13.5g is considered medium mass, right in the middle. That should open you up to lots of cartridges. I would look for a cart with around 20cu compliance or slightly less probably. Just remember that Japanese cartridges state their spec differently and attempting to convert it is dicey. Also remember that almost any MM/MI cartridge is going to be affected by loading (resistance and capacitance) at the preamp and your TT cabling. You might want to look at the input capacitance of your Rotel preamp and your cables then go from there when choosing a cart.
Thanks for all the help everybody, much appreciated! I think I'm going to live with the 2M Silver for a bit and see if the sound changes while I investigate a cartridge upgrade.