Munich 2014

Phasemation is a “pet” project of a Japanese industrialist-audiophile who uses his company’s manufacturing prowess (Kyodo Denshi Engineering Co., Ltd) to design and build high performance audio products including a three chassis phono preamp currently under review by me for Stereophile. The company’s specialty is precision measurement equipment for the IT industry.

At the Munich show the American importer AXISS Distribution introduced to me a pair of cartridges previously unavailable in America: the $3800 PP-1000 and the lower cost PP-300. The PP-1000 is a low output (.25mV) model with coils of “six-nines” copper, a boron cantilever and a line contact (0.040 mm x 0.007 mm) stylus.

The $15,000 phono preamp is an impressive sounding product so at $3800 the cartridge could be a real “sleeper” at a very reasonable price in today’s high performance cartridge marketplace.