VERTERE XTRAX AND VERTERE DARK SABRE CARTRIDGES LAUNCHED

Touraj Moghaddam, the founder and chief designer of Vertere, has launched the new Vertere XtraX and Vertere Dark Sabre Cartridges.

The Vertere XtraX and Vertere Dark Sabre Cartridges represent, says Touraj, significant improvements over their predecessors, which will now sit beneath them in the Vertere cartridge range.

Touraj’s designs are driven by first principles but aided by years of experimentation and experience. Though he admits the purple colour of the XtraX is to keep marketing happy, it makes no difference to the performance, but the hard anodising that enables the purple finish does assist the overall performance by being a tough, rigid shell.

VERTERE XTRAX MC CARTRIDGE

XtraX follows Vertere’s Mystic moving coil cartridge and improves upon it in every area including lower tip mass, a stiffer, faster cantilever attached to a very low mass cross coil in a time-constant magnetic Field, a combination known internally as “Direct Drive”.

VERTERE XTRAX SPECS

The body is precision CNC machined from solid aluminium alloy and hard anodised.

Threaded body to accept the supplied stainless steel thumb screws for correct coupling of the cartridge body to the tonearm headshell.

Three specifically designed contact points CNC machined into the top of the body that provide the exact mechanical coupling required.

Alignment ridge on the front top that assists mounting XtraX to any Vertere tonearm.

The low-mass generator utilises a Samarium-Cobalt magnet with a low-mass cross coil made of pure virgin copper wires.

The low-mass generator is mounted into the high-mass body using a Quad-Point Contact with Four Stainless’ Spike’ Screws for optimum support and control of unwanted mechanical vibrations.

The telescopic aluminium tube cantilever utilising two different aluminium materials – maximises stiffness without a massive high Q peak.

Nude Micro Elliptical single crystal diamond stylus tip for maximum tracking ability without compromising the high-frequency response or increasing surface noise.

Square shank diamond assembly maximises alignment precision, consistency and rigidity.

Wideband frequency response of below 10Hz to 45kHz.

Output of 0.45mV

VERTERE DARK SABRE MM CARTRIDGE

Traditionally, moving magnet cartridges have tended to be seen and heard as low and middle-market products. In the last two or three years, a few more high-end moving magnet cartridges have been launched mainly to suit modern high-end integrated amplifiers. A relatively new market entrant was Vertere’s Sabre, the high-end moving magnet cartridge, which has been successful and brought a demand for an even further improved version.

With its single crystal, nude micro elliptical diamond and dual aluminium telescopic cantilever, Vertere say Dark Sabre improves on Sabre significantly.

Read the HiFi PiG review of the Vertere Sabre cartridge here.

VERETERE DARK SABRE HIGH-END MOVING MAGNET SPECS

Aluminium alloy body CNC precision machined from solid then hard anodised black.

The low-mass generator utilises an Alnico magnet with a low-mass cross coil made of pure virgin copper wires.

The low-mass generator is mounted into the high-mass body using a Quad-Point Contact with Four Stainless’ Spike’ Screws for optimum support and control of unwanted mechanical vibrations.

The body is mass-tuned to the generator for optimum support of unwanted energy transfer.

The telescopic aluminium tube cantilever utilising two different aluminium materials – maximises stiffness without a massive high Q peak.

Nude Micro Elliptical single crystal diamond stylus tip for maximum tracking ability without compromising the high-frequency response or increasing surface noise.

Square shank diamond assembly maximises alignment precision, consistency, and rigidity.

Alignment ridge on the front top that assists mounting Sabre to any Vertere tonearm.

Three specifically designed contact points CNC machined into the top of the body that provide the exact mechanical coupling required.

Three specifically designed contact points CNC machined into the top of the body that provide the exact mechanical coupling required.

Wideband frequency response of below 14Hz to above 28kHz

Output of 4.3mV

VERTERE XTRAX AND VERTERE DARK SABRE CARTRIDGES PRICING

The prices are Vertere XtraX £5800, €6998, $6499 and Vertere Dark Sabre £1450, €1798, $1599.

Both cartridges will be available from the end of October.

HiFi PiG Says: Touraj and the team really know their turntables and cartridges, looking forward to hearing these soon.