Gear & technology

MC cartridge

Also called moving coil cartridge, moving coil

A moving coil cartridge puts tiny coils on the stylus cantilever and fixes the magnets, the reverse of a moving magnet design. The lower moving mass is prized for detail, but the output is far smaller and needs a phono stage with extra gain.

In a moving coil cartridge tiny coils on the cantilever move in the field of a fixed magnet. Keeping the moving coils light means only a few turns of wire, so the signal is much smaller, a few tenths of a millivolt for low-output designs, so it needs a step-up transformer or a phono stage with extra gain.

Low-output MC cartridges produce a few tenths of a millivolt, so the Phono stage must be very quiet or use a step-up transformer. High-output MC designs output enough for a standard MM input.

MC cartridges are usually more expensive and cannot have the stylus replaced by the user. Their fans describe a faster, more open sound than an MM cartridge; sceptics note that a good MM on a well-set-up Tonearm is hard to beat for the money.

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