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A good high fidelity pickup must have more than wide frequency response. Low distortion, particularly at high recorded velocities, is vital. Low tracking force is clearly desirable from the standpoint of record and stylus wear, yet this must not be attained at the expense of good tracking of high level passages. Similarly, the desirable qualities of high lateral compliance and low moving mass must not result in an excessively fragile cartridge.: The extent to which these and other properties of a good phono pickup have been achieved in practical commercial pickups will be discussed, together with comments on some of the less desirable compromises, from the standpoint of the user who is basically interested in listening to music rather than keeping abreast of the latest gadgetry.
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 Scott Dorsey |
Comment posted February 21, 2019 @ 18:57:11 UTC
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Mr. Hirsch describes an ideal phono cartridge and what should be expected in a reasonable phono cartridge design, along with some pleas for standardization. Much of his discussion is no longer applicable in the world of stereo which completely changed cartridge design at about the time this paper was being written. However, an important mention was made of the total lack of compliance standards causing a need to match cartridge for tonearm. Unfortunately such standards were never established and the stability issues resulting from the lack of standardization persist even today. Mr. Hirsch was a very divisive character in the audio community with his insistence on measurement at all cost, in an era when measurements were often difficult to correlate with perceived audible effects and when measurements were far cruder than they are today. However, his calls for standardization and for basic equipment requirements to be defined before anything else, as seen in this paper, did much to establish audio as a science. (Respond to this comment)
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