Ortofon Cadenza Black

AS THE FLAGSHIP model in Ortofon's middle-ranking Cadenza range, the Black sets out to give a taste of the company's latest high-end models without the expense. It's a conventional design with a painted aluminium and stainless steel body, and uses a boron cantilever tipped by a nude Shibata stylus.

The coil windings use Ortofon's Aucurum wire, made from gold-plated 6NX copper. This gives a low quoted output of 0.33mV, so you'll need a good phono preamplifier. It's on the heavy side at 10.7g and is of medium compliance, at 16μm/mN, so easy to match to most modern tonearms. It tracks best at its recommended 2.3g. Frequency response isn't specified, but channel separation is put at less than 27dB. Recommended load impedance is less than 10ohm. As ever for this level of Ortofon cartridge, it's beautifully made and easy enough to fit.

Sound quality