Touraj Moghaddam founder and CEO of Vertere Acoustics confirmed today that the new Vertere Mystic Moving Coil Cartridge is now available.

Retailing for £2000 in the UK, it will ship from Vertere to shops this week. Mystic will also be available in the USA and Europe for $2695 and 2498€ respectively from the second week of December.

Vertere Acoustics is best known for its high-end turntables and related products such as the Reference RG-1 Record Player and the Reference Tonearm. The more affordable but DG-1 Dynamic Groove Record Player was launched in May, at the international High End Hifi show in Munich.

Vertere Mystic Cartridge

Unlike the DG-1 the Mystic Moving Cartridge is not revolutionary, no wheels have been reinvented, the Mystic is a combination of “experience, common sense, science and a little art”. And oit comes in a rather fetching sapphire blue anodised finish.

Cartridge Design

Once the decision has been made on the motor system depending on the target market and to a small extent personal predilection, the key to designing – for all but the most extreme of high end cartridges – is to balance the design parameters: to deliver a cartridge that stays in the groove, retrieves the maximum musical information and is least affected by old or damaged records.

There are of course extremes in the world of hifi – extremes where the designer optimises one parameter almost to the exclusion of others – and these products are often the most talked about as they are loved or detested in spades. But this is not the Touraj way: he doesn’t want a system that favours closed miked jazz over rock or symphonic over punk. He wants a system that allows most records in a collection to be played and enjoyed In his view a hifi enthusiast with a small record collection just does not have the right system yet.

When Vertere launched the DG-1 Touraj said: “The job of a record player is very simple, and very linear it has to allow the most accurate measurement of a something going past the stylus and throwing it from side to side over 1000 times every centimetre.”

The situation hasn’t changed except in this story the focus is the cartridge including the cantilever and diamond stylus which is the part that’s actually being thrown about over 1000 times every centimetre of record travel.

From The Designer

Touraj explains the source of some of his background knowledge

“Our collaboration with music industry engineers has given us invaluable insights into the art of cutting. This has enabled us to advance our record player (and by record player we mean Turntable, Tonearm and Cartridge) design in many ways to extract the maximum from vinyl records.

For example, with his recent remixes of the Beatles albums, Giles Martin – son of the late Sir George – used a Vertere MG-1 record player including SG-1 tonearm and PHONO-1 preamplifier throughout to check and approve the acetates and the test pressings.

And we’ve worked closely with the multi-award-winning mastering engineer Miles Showell: since February 2017. Miles has been using his own extensively customised Neumann VMS 80 lathe, incorporating Vertere cables, to cut normal and half-speed masters for the likes of ABBA, Cream, The Police and The Rolling Stones, and also the 50th anniversary release of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beatles (otherwise known as ‘The White Album’).

Working closely with Miles has led to the first releases on our own record label Vertere Records. Release: a three-track EP and first album by Scottish band Caezar, and the first album by Dutch singer/songwriter Elles Springs, which was specially tape-transferred and then half-speed mastered and cut by Miles for our label.

It’s only by involving ourselves at every stage of the record-making process that we can ensure our players bring you as close as possible to what the artists and engineers wanted you to hear.”

The Mystic Moving Coil Details

The body is machined from solid aluminium alloy

The body is mass-tuned to the generator for optimum support and control of unwanted mechanical vibrations

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 are machined into the top of the body that provide the exact mechanical coupling required.

Alignment ridge on the front top that assists mounting Mystic 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 aluminium 7000 telescopic tube cantilever maximises stiffness without a massive high Q peak

Micro Elliptical diamond stylus tip that is designed for maximum tracking ability without compromising the high frequency response or increasing surface noise

Bonded through diamond assembly maximises alignment and rigidity

Wide band frequency response of below 10Hz to 40kHz

Output of 0.5mV

Mystic Specifications

Type                                                           Moving Coil Phono Cartridge

Mounting                                                   M2.5 Threaded Holes,  Special Tri-Point Contact

Output level                                               0.5mV

Frequency response                                10 Hz -40 kHz (-3dB)

Coil Impedance (per Channel)                40Ω

Recommended load                                 680 Ω – 1k5 Ω,   220pF – 470 pF

Channel balance                                        Better than 1.0 dB

Recommended tracking weight                2.0g (1.9g – 2.1g)

Cantilever                                                   Aluminium Alloy 7000,  Two-piece Telescopic

Stylus                                                          Micro Elliptical Diamond

Weight                                                         9.1 g

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