GRAMOPHONE DREAMS
We were playing some old, cherished black discs when my partner, bb (the 6'-tall Aries artist), declared, “With records you hear touch, and you are not alone.” Long pause. “Just holding the cover brings back memories—that’s their humanity.”
At the RockyMountan Audio Fest in 2017, I walked into the Believe High Fidelity room and, just inside the door, I stopped, closed my eyes, and examined the sound with my mind. What I heard was glowing and tactile—and it occupied the room in an attention-grabbing way. I asked Believe HiFi’s principal “believer,” Joshua Masongsong, “What’s going on here?” He started talking about the speakers and amplifiers, but I wasn’t listening: I knew it was something else. So I sat down in the sweet spot and closed my eyes again.
On my way out, I whispered to Joshua, “Remind me, what’s the name of that cartridge?” That was my first encounter with the $5400 Etsuro Urushi Cobalt Blue moving-coil cartridge.
At RMAF 2018, I walked into Believe HiFi’s room and immediately felt the sound in the air. Once again, I sensed it occupying the room.
The more I listened, the clearer it became: This MC cartridge was doing something quite different than the Koetsus, Lyras, and Ortofons I was familiar with. But I couldn’t find words to describe what I observed. On my way out, I had to ask, “Listen, Joshua, I’m having strong feelings about this cartridge—may I please review it?”
In today’s audio world, an expensive, hand-built Urushi-lacquered phono cartridge packaged in a rice-paper-wrapped wood box is the aesthetic and commercial opposite of a computer-designed, mass-produced, wave-soldered, DAC chip. That difference is what this story is about.
Etsuro Urushi Cobalt Blue
Etsuro Urushi’s Cobalt Blue cartridge sports an A7075 duralumin body,
