ANALOG CORNER
Ortofon had hoped to introduce its new MC Verismo “in person” at one of last fall’s North American shows, but those shows never took place. COVID necessitated instead an October 30 live Facebook introduction, the company’s first such premier. The next day, AnalogPlanet posted an exclusive interview with Leif Johannsen, the cartridge’s designer and Ortofon’s chief officer of acoustics and technology.1
Those familiar with Ortofon’s MC A95 (reviewed here in May and June 2015) will recognize the new cartridge’s “platform shoe” shape, which was created using Selective Laser Melting (SLM) technology to produce a titanium body that’s impossible to produce in the same shape and density using standard CNC machining. The Verismo has a very similar shape, but it’s bigger than the A95. The new shape also has visual elements reminiscent of the limited-edition MC Century ($12,000).
Like the unlimited-production, top-of-the-line Anna Diamond ($10,499), the new Verismo ($6995) features a diamond cantilever to which is attached a Swiss-manufactured Replicant 100 line-contact stylus shaped to resemble a cutting stylus as closely as possible.
The Verismo’s neodymium-based magnet system shares with the MC A95 and the $5159 Windfeld Ti a metal-alloy armature that’s less magnetic than standard iron. Ortofon claims that this armature has “almost no” influence on the magnetic field and that it improves dynamics, which makes sense, since the moving part is less bound by magnetic attraction. Ortofon also says the armature’s design helps achieve coil-turn precision in each layer, which helps produce lower distortion and channel balance and separation.
Ortofon claims its “Aucurum” gold-plated, 6NX oxygen-free copper coil wire “allows for zero-loss transmission of the diamond’s movements via its Diamond cantilever.” The system combines low moving mass and high structural rigidity.
In use since 1979, when it was introduced in the MC 20 Mk.II, the “Wide Range Damping System” clamps a small, heavy, “exotic metal” disc between a pair of rubber dampers of differing properties to produce a suspension system that Ortofon claims maintains uniform damping and tracking performance
