Brilliant Corners #17: Monomania! The Miyajima Zero Mono phono cartridge
Stereo is the most successful audio gimmick of all time. While dashboard record players, quadraphonic LPs, and MQA have gone the way of Ron Popeil’s hair-in-a-spray-can infomercials, stereo remains king. And I am guilty of loving it.
That old expression “men love with their eyes” applies to listening, too. Enabled by the advent of a second channel, the fanning out of musicians across a soundstage fills the room and gives the eyes—and not only the ears—something to do. And I happen to enjoy the soundstage. It may be an utterly artificial delight, but who doesn’t love hearing a tambourine coming from 10′ to the left of the left speaker? So when I came across an article in which someone likened mono to listening to music through a hole in a wall, the metaphor made sense. Why would anyone want their music congealed in a blob directly in front of them when they could hear it separated out in space?
As always, though, it turns out that things aren’t quite so simple. A number of listeners I respect—often the very same folks who enjoy low-powered tube amplifiers, vinyl, vintage gear, and horn speakers—consider the soundstage a distraction, or at least a compromise whereby we trade some of the music’s life force for a visual spectacle created not by the artist but by the engineer.
I’ve often wondered what these listeners were going on about. For me, their conviction simply wasn’t borne out through personal experience and seemed like one of those perversely contrary hipster positions, like preferring a foot-pedal– operated sewing machine to an electric one. When listening to stereo and mono versions of the same record, I’ve consistently preferred the stereo mixes (here I’m talking about stereo-era records, not “electronically rechanneled” records from the mono era, which are the sonic equivalent of a bad hairpiece). For me, even early stereo Beatles LPs, and other examples of awkward hard-panned left-right mixes, were preferable to music emerging from a single point between the speakers. So for years I scoffed at mono records from the stereo era as something anachronistic and embarrassing, a sop for Luddites who desperately clung to the past.
If only I knew then what I know now. Attentive readers will probably have deduced that I was comparing stereo and mono LPs using a stereo cartridge. And why not? As far as I knew, mono cartridges had simply one fewer coil. I knew that they were quieter, since mono cartridges are unaffected by vertical motion. Still, the promise of less noise didn’t address my essential problem with one-channel audio.
My beliefs changed dramatically during the past several months, which I’ve spent listening to a pair of mono cartridges. The one I’ll talk about here is the Miyajima Zero Mono, a cousin of that company’s Shilabe, one of my favorite stereo cartridges of all time, which I’ve written about in this column. Miyajima Laboratory, located in Fukuoka, Japan, seemed like a natural place to begin this experiment. More than any company I can think of, it is devoted to the mono-cartridge project: According to its website, it currently manufactures four mono models. Except that’s not really true. Each of those models—the Kotetu, the Spirit, the Zero, and the Infinity, listed by price, lowest to highest—are offered with a stylus for either conventional microgroove records or a larger one for 78rpm disks. Oh, and the top two models are available with one of two microgroove styli—a standard 0.7mm, suitable for records pressed from stampers cut with a stereo cutting stylus (which include most LPs made after the late 1960s as well as modern reissues) and 1mm, best for records made from stampers cut with a true mono stylus (which include LPs from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, a period during which groove width varied considerably). This means that Miyajima can sell you no fewer than 10 distinct mono cartridges. That’s dedication!
My sample of the Zero Mono, a low-output moving coil cartridge that retails for $2250 (footnote 1), came with a 0.7mm nude conical diamond stylus, a body made of African blackwood, and an output voltage of 0.4mV. The recommended VTF is a highish 3.5gm; internal impedance is 6 ohms. Like the Shilabe, the Zero Mono does not offer threaded mounting holes, which means it has to be attached to a headshell with long screws inserted from below, a procedure I dread. (During installation, after dropping one of the tiny nuts for the third time and watching it roll under a Klipsch La Scala, I nearly put my fist through some nearby drywall.) On the plus side, I saved some time by not fiddling with VTA, since mono cartridges don’t hardly care.
Humming to the Oldies
Eventually, my guileless fingers prevailed, and the Zero Mono was mounted safely on the Well Tempered Labs LTD tonearm, which itself was mounted on that company’s Amadeus 254 GT turntable. I connected the turntable to the Manley Steelhead phono stage, which was connected to a Prima Luna EVO 400 line stage, and sat down to listen.
What I heard through the speakers was … hum. It was loud. Soon, I sussed out the issue: A mono cartridge connected to a stereo phono stage tends to create a ground loop. Miyajima importer Robin Wyatt suggested unplugging one of the leads from the back of the preamp. I did. More hum. I called Wyatt back, who advised that I go for a walk to lower my blood pressure. In the meantime, he mailed me a Y-splitter interconnect that converts two RCA outputs to a single RCA input. The splitter arrived a few days later. It was supposed to fix the hum. It didn’t.
What I needed was a phono stage with a mono switch. Yes, the Steelhead has one, but frustratingly, it’s in the circuit only when the Steelhead is used as a full-function preamplifier rather than a fixed-volume phono stage. After more cussing, I took out the Prima Luna line stage, connected the Steelhead to the Manley Mahis from the former’s variable-volume outputs, and turned the system on. Then I pressed the mono button and turned up the volume. The hum was gone. Expletives of relief and taking Christ’s name in vain ensued.
If you’re interested in exploring mono cartridges, keep in mind that using one in a stereo system will almost certainly create a ground loop. Frustratingly, the procedure for eliminating it with the Ortofon Cadenza Mono (review forthcoming) turned out to be different than with the Miyajima, since their internal constructions are different. What I’m getting around to suggesting is that when mounting a mono cartridge for the first time, factor in some time for trial and error, breathing techniques, and maybe three fingers of bourbon.
Listening
I suppose I should have started off my time with the Zero Mono by listening to something easy and gentle to get us acquainted, maybe a nice reissue of Julie London or the Modern Jazz Quartet. (I own neither.) Instead, I pulled out an abused first pressing of Nina Simone’s Little Girl Blue (Bethlehem BCP-6028), bought for a dollar ages ago at a Salvation Army in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury. It’s a recording I love, but I’ve avoided listening to this copy because of the flurry of groove noise and scratches that threaten to swamp the music.
Hearing Simone play the first chords of Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” made me sit up. Those piano chords were so forceful that they jarred at first, then sounded utterly riveting. And to my growing surprise, the surface noise was lowered by orders of magnitude. Even the deep scratches that with stereo cartridges result in sickeningly loud pops were rendered inoffensive. I listened to the whole record, marveling at the power and beauty of the music and the tensile rage at the heart of Simone’s artistry, laid bare even here, on her debut studio album, which she recorded aged all of 24 in 1957.
The Miyajima’s way of making even severe surface noise tolerable was evident on every less-than-pristine record I played. Of course, no cartridge can make scratches inaudible, but the Zero Mono’s way of taming their impact and moving them to the background made previously unlistenable LPs not only palatable but enjoyable.
Footnote 1: Miyajima Laboratory/Otono-Edison, 1-45-111, Katae 5-chome Jounan-ku, Fukuoka 814-0142 Japan. Web: miyajima-lab.com. US distributor: Robyatt Audio, 13 Dotters Corner Rd. Kunkletown, PA 18058. Tel: (908) 334-3241. Web: robyattaudio.com.
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