Unveiled for the first time in June at the Vienna Audio Show, the AT-MCD1 pushes the Japanese manufacturer’s boundaries in MC cartridge design.
As you’ll read in an interview with Chief Engineer Yosuke Koizumi to be published in the coming days, this new cartridge was conceived following the surprise at how quickly the limited-edition AT-MC2022 –launched in 2022 to celebrate Audio Technica’s 60th anniversary– sold out.
Building on this foundation –and thus using a single diamond block for both the cantilever and the stylus– the cantilever, with a radius of 0.22 mm, has had its mass further reduced on the AT-MCD1, while the tip radius of the Nude Shibata stylus has been reduced to 2.7 x 0.08 mil (or 68.5 x 2 µm). At the same time, Audio Technica’s engineers sought to design the best possible driver, naturally building upon their PCOCC (Pure Copper by Ohno Continuous Casting) dual-coil system.
The chassis is also designed to provide maximum resistance to vibration, featuring an aluminum base and a titanium housing, dampened by an elastomer coating. And since this is a modern cartridge, there is no locknut; the screws are simply inserted from the top using two threaded inserts. To ensure the best possible connection to the tonearm cable, the four connectors are plated with 3 microns of gold.
More discreet than the gold-plated anniversary series, the AT-MCD1 is simply black. And of course, it is hand-assembled in Japan, with a suggested retail price on par with competing reference cartridges at 11 000 €.
