Goldring Eroica HX

Usefully comprehensive, Goldring's cartridge range has been fairly long lived, and new arrivals are always worthy of note. The HX replaces the H as the only high-output moving coil in Goldring's range and is part of the more affordable Eroica (Italian for hero) family below the Elite and Ethos lines.

The HX looks similar to the outgoing H and has a body made from Pocan. Goldring says this is robust and has no sonic signature. As it is fairly light, the 6.6g weight (including fixings) should be easy enough to accommodate in most arms. The body is unthreaded though, meaning that a nut and bolt needs to be used to fit it - making it more fiddly than threaded rivals. The audio and ground pins are inverted in the traditional Goldring manner, which might be an issue for very short tags.

Internally, the HX has a new pure iron armature that is cross shaped. The iron acts as a permeable path for unwanted magnetic currents and the cross shape effectively separates the left and right channels. By packing in a higher number of windings made from extremely fine copper wire, Goldring ensures the Eroica HX can work into a standard moving-magnet input.

While it does well when used in this manner, it's only fair to point out that the 2.5mV output is lower than a more traditional moving-magnet type and I find a 50dB setting works better into our test system.