At Its New Soho Technica House, Audio Technica Debuts the new AT-ART1000x "Direct Power" Phono Cartridge
replaces the original AT-ART1000
At Audio Technica's new SoHo-based Technica House, described by the company as "a shared space of collaboration and inspiration, celebrating the Japanese aesthetic and Audio-Technica's analog philosophy" Audio Technica's chief engineer for cartridge design, Yosuke Koizumi explained the changes made to the original AT-ART1000 "Direct Power" moving coil cartridge introduced in 2016 and designed by company veteran and even back then retired, Mitsuo Miyata, who, when the cartridge business began to lose steam back in the 1990s turned his attention to headphones. Today A-T is Japan's leading headphone brand—or at least it was in 2016 when I interviewed him.
The ART1000 is a totally unique design shared by no other cartridge manufacturer (I doubt any other company has the skill and expertise to attempt it) in that the coils are attached atop directly above the stylus/cantilever junction. The coils fit within the magnetic gap that's located directly above. This puts the signal generation directly where the "action" occurs rather than at the other end of the cantilever behind the fulcrum produced by the elastomer suspension. The original looked like this:
The new 1000x features a new coil shape that helps produce higher output compared to the original's .2mV. Designer Koizumi says also that he found the original a bit "cool" sounding and that the new 1000x has a richer overall sound, particularly in the midrange (he talks about it in the embedded video but some might have trouble understanding his English—it took me a few plays to catch all the words). Another change is that the cartridge mounting holes are now threaded instead of requiring locking nuts. That's a big improvement for the fumble fingered!
The original 1000 cost $5000. The new 1000x costs $5500, a small increase considering the update and the passage of 8 years. Because assembly is so painstakingly precise, Audio-Technica can only produce about one of these cartridges per day so they will be in short supply.
When i visited the factory back in 2016 and met with Koizumi-san he brought part of his record collection to the factory to show me—a selection of EPs. He's a man of very good musical tastes. I say that because they align with mine, despite the age gap! Thumbing through the records I found a Move single I'd never before seen. When I wrote the original story for my previous endeavor, I remarked that he looked far younger than his age then, which was 36. He still does. Vinyl enthusiasm does that!
Normally I would not link to my previous endeavor's site but not doing so would be foolish because from there you can see the interview with the original designer referenced above, you can browse through Koizumi-san's swell EP and singles collection (it's also embedded in the MC-2022 review on this site) , tour the Audio-Technica headquarters as it existed in 2016 and read the column I wrote about the experience. The magazine's loss has been my and your gain (IMO) so here's the link to all of it (as you can see below, I accidentally misidentified the new cartridge as the "MC-ART1000x").
I hope to get one of these to review ASAP.
