Koetsu Azule Platinum MC Cartridge

Transform Your Listening Room Into a Private Concert Hall: Koetsu Azule Platinum Phono Cartridge Boasts Surreal Refinement, Dynamics, Balance, Separation, and Imaging

Invite the musicians that play on your favorite albums into your house, have them set up in front of you, and sit back and enjoy the experience from the relaxed comfort of an easy chair with the Koetsu Azule Platinum phono cartridge. Azule Platinum is sonic surrealism, emotional engagement, and sensory-tugging involvement on the level of witnessing a private concert by the likes of AC/DC, Pat Metheny, Buddy Guy, Neil Young, or Aretha Franklin. You pick the style, you're in control of the songs. Azule Platinum effortlessly handles the rest, from breathtaking dynamics to pinpoint imaging, hallowed warmth, luscious textures, pristinely balanced tones, and creamy smoothness. As for recreating the physical dimensions and valuable ambience of the original recording – those qualities, too, transpire in wowing fashion. The hand-crafted Azule Platinum boasts a fabled, highly polished stone body hand-carved from a flawless block of jade. While absolutely beautiful in appearance, its sound is leagues better, and in this exotic musical instrument, it is paired with silver-clad six-nines (99.9999% pure) copper wiring and rare platinum-alloy magnets to turn recorded music into honest-to-goodness living entities. Once you experience Azule Platinum, and the ear-turning spaciousness and refinement that follow, you'll never look at vinyl records the same way again.

Changing the Idea of What Vinyl Can Do
Koetsu cartridges don't require any fancy promotion or exaggerated typecasting. They stand alone for what they represent: The zenith of analog sound. These reverential musical instruments are all about musical transcendence and transformation. Indeed, while some listeners will inevitably demand how Koetsu justifies its pricing, our reply is simple: Once you listen, you'll hear and understand everything. Questions and doubts immediately melt away. All that's left behind is music distinguished with utmost ease, liquidity, vibrancy, clarity, responsiveness, and focus. The kind that leaves you wondering just how much detail, information, and texture you've missed on records you've heard hundreds of times.

Turning Audiophile Ideals Into Reality
Unsurpassed quality and superior performance never come cheap. By its definition, "best" applies to a very select and extremely small sample size. While not everyone will be fortunate enough to experience the thrills wrought by a Koetsu cartridge mining vinyl's grooves and making beautiful music, all audiophiles relate to – and crave – the idea of the reference-setting imaging, three-dimensionality, supple harmonic richness, and tonal elegance that they effortlessly produce. The difference is that such sought-after characteristics aren't just starry-eyed ideas or goals with Koetsu. They're reality. And with a Koetsu, they're your reality. Welcome to analog paradise.

Continuing a Proud Legacy
Founded in the 1970s by Yoshiaki Sugano – a multi-skilled boxer, sword maker, painter, metallurgist, and Toyota executive that held a special love for hi-fi audio – and named after Honami Koetsu, a 17th-century Japanese artist and calligrapher, Koetsu prizes tradition, purity, and perfection. A direct descendant of the medieval Koetsu, Sugano demanded his cantilevers be built of a "special" iron custom-made by a northern Japanese university that used a secret process. After receiving pre-aged rubber suspensions and rosewood bodies from other craftsman, Sugano painstakingly hand-built each cartridge in the same manner a legendary violin maker obsesses over a wood's finite grain and age. Koetsu cartridges stood out not only for their transparent sound and exotic materials, but for their elegant appearance. Today, Sugano's son, Fumihiko, carries on the proud legacy.

Body: Dumortierite
Type: Moving Coil
Coil Wiring: Silverplated Copper
Magnet: Platinum Magnet
Cantilever: Boron Cantilever
Output Volts: 0.3 mV
Frequency Range: 20Hz to 100kHz
Channel Sep.: 25db / 1kHz
Inner Impedance: 5 Ohm
Channel Balance: .5 db / 1kHz
Recommended Imp.: 30 Ohm
Weight: 13g
Compliance: 5 x 10-6 cm/dyne at 100 hz
Recommended Tracking Force: 1.8-2.0g
Recommended Load: 80-1,000 Ohms