EX 700 MC Phono Cartridge - Spruce from the South Tyrol
For the body, we use the finest spruce harvested as “tonewood” for violin tops in the South Tyrol region of Northern Italy.
This is the same material used in the EX2000, the flagship model of Analog Relax cartridges.
South Tyrol is the forest region said to be the source of the materials for the legendary Stradivarius. We utilize the finest spruce that has been strictly cultivated and managed in this region, with equally strict controls during the drying stage.
During standard violin crafting, varnish is applied in over a dozen layers. Since a violin is played by rubbing strings with a bow, creating powerful vibrations in the body, the instrument resonates sufficiently even with a thick coating of varnish applied more than 10 times.
However, a cartridge deals with minute vibrations. If the coating film is too thick, it absorbs the vibration of the cartridge body. As a result, the reproduced sound became completely unappealing.
From there, through repeated trial and error, we arrived at a method of applying extremely thin layers of oil varnish. Before we knew it, three years had passed.
Additionally, we have adopted a “boron cantilever” for the first time at Analog Relax.
Due to the nature of boron cantilevers, it is difficult to drill the small hole required to insert the stylus, so the standard method has been to attach the stylus using only adhesive. However, this physically makes the stylus prone to detaching. To address this, we have attached an ultra-small, ultra-thin metal plate with a hole—the “Stylus Hold Plate”—to the tip of the boron cantilever to reinforce the stylus retention.
Spruce is famous as a top material for violins, but it is also a wood often used for the soundboards of guitars and pianos.
As you can imagine, the compatibility with string instruments is outstanding, but we hope you will play all genres of music with this cartridge. We believe you will enjoy an organic and musical record playback experience that was not possible with previous cartridges.
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