Sunday, October 2, 2016

Some Common Variations Of The Turntable Cartridge

By Stephen Reynolds


One of the very important components of record players is the magnetic cartridge. This serves as a playback of analog sounds which are referred to as records. And now, it is commonly known as a turntable. Some terms referred to this before are gramophone and phonograph. Cartridge is also known a pick up, an electro mechanical device type that converts vibrational energy into an electrical energy. Electrical signals which are created are amplified and converted to sounds by the loud speakers.

The components of this includes cantilever, styluses, coils, magnets, and the body. The mounted stylus serves as a contact to the record groove. The styluses are usually made out from industrial gemstones or small polished diamonds. The cantilever serves as a support to its stylus and it will transmit the vibrations to magnet or coil assembly. Cantilevers before are often made from aluminum or boron. There are some types of a turntable cartridge that contains detachable cantilever and styluses which may be an advantage because there is no need to replace or remove cartridges if the styluses are worn out.

Cartridges come into many types, each different sizes and shapes. Moving magnet and moving coil are the two most common principles of technologies that powers the types. Moving coils have more advanced designs and also, it is more expensive compared to moving magnets. There are some MC variants that have cheap designs, but it definitely have poor sounds.

Stylus cantilevers in magnetic cartridges often carry magnets permanently placed between two coils that are fixed in an electromagnetic generator form. If a magnet vibrates responding the stylus, it induces some current. Since magnets are made small and have a little mass, it cannot be connected to a generator mechanically and styluses that are adjusted will be following the grooves and would require a lesser amount of tracking force.

These magnetic types which are induced and as well as the iron type have moving pieces of iron or some other types of ferrous alloy. These are being connected to cantilevers instead of magnets. The bigger and the permanent magnet is placed above the coils which provides a magnetic flux necessarily.

The design of MC cartridges is an electromagnetic type of generator. Unlike MM designs, magnet and coils are reversed. Coil is attached to stylus moving in a constant magnet. The coil is made of very tiny fine wire. However, some MC cartridges may also have an output indistinguishable to MM cartridges.

Another one is a moving micro cross type of cartridge. The MMC design is said to be one variant of MI design. Both coils and magnets stay in one area while the micro cross goes with stylus.

And one last type is a London Decca cartridge. This is considered as a unique design and its coils and magnets are fixed. The styluses have tips made from diamond, it has a short iron, and its cantilever is in L shape made from a non magnetic steel.

The iron is positioned very near to the stylus tip, thus, resulting to an accurate tracking of the motions. The engineers of this type referred this tracking as a positive scanning. These types are usually very musical.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment