The market for affordable cartridges got slightly hotter this week with Rega announcing a new moving magnet model called the Nd5.
We start with the Nd5’s cantilever which protrudes, as usual, from the headshell to ‘read’ the record. To that cantilever’s business end, Rega has attached an elliptical nude diamond stylus. The stylus tip sits in the record’s groove and, as the record spins, the movement generated by the groove pattern (up/down and left/right) moves the cantilever. This, in turn, moves the magnets attached to the other end of the cantilever. And that ‘magnetic movement’ – relative to miniaturised coils fixed inside the cartridge shell – generates the low-level electrical signal that travels through the tonearm wire and interconnects to our phono pre-amplifier.
In the Nd5, however, those magnets are Neodymium magnets, which according to Rega’s press release is the “most powerful commercially available magnet”. The miniaturised parallel coils are wound in-house “utilising 38-micron wire with just 1275 turns. This produces a low inductance, low impedance generator giving vastly improved high-frequency response and exceptional soundstage.”
The press release also says the Nd5 “has an optimised pole gap for superior linearity and crosstalk characteristics”.
Each Nd5 is handmade by Rega in the UK with the production process utilising a “brand-new generator geometry” that, according to the British manufacturer, “offers perfect symmetry to achieve highly accurate channel balance". "Source: Darco.Audio"
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