Magnetic cartridge

The cartridge contains a removable or permanently mounted stylus, the tip - usually a gemstone, such as diamond or sapphire - of which makes physical contact with the record's groove.

During the years immediately following World War II, as old record players with very heavy pickups were replaced, precision-ground and long-lasting stylus tips made of sapphire or the exotic hard metal osmium were increasingly popular.

At first, the new styli came installed in smaller, lighter piezoelectric crystal or ceramic cartridges of the general type found in inexpensive self-contained portable record players throughout the phonographic era.

Ceramic cartridges continue to be used in most of the "retro" and compact record players currently being made, in part because they are comparatively robust and resistant to damage from careless handling, but mostly because they are inexpensive.

However, during the 1950s, a new generation of small, lightweight, highly compliant magnetic cartridges appeared and quickly found favor among high-fidelity enthusiasts because of their audibly superior performance.

[4] Coupled to the tonearm, the cartridge body's function is to give the moving parts a stationary platform so that they can track the groove with precision.

Compared to the crystal and ceramic pickups, the magnetic cartridge usually gives improved playback fidelity and reduced record wear by tracking the groove with lighter pressure.

Thus it is more challenging to design a preamplifier with the extremely low noise inputs needed for moving-coil cartridge, therefore a "step up transformer" is sometimes used instead.

[4] Moving coil cartridges are extremely small precision instruments and are therefore generally expensive, but are frequently preferred by audiophiles due to a subjectively better performance.

The stylus shaft was composed of the diamond tip, a short piece of soft iron, and an L-shaped cantilever made of non-magnetic steel.

Decca cartridges had a reputation for being very musical; however early versions required more tracking force than competitive designs - making record wear a concern.