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Air Tight PC-1 Cartridge
TAS 2006 Phono Cartridge of the Year Award Winner! Stereophile Class K recommended component!
20th Anniversary Deluxe packaging includes a decorative cushioned box that comes custom wrapped from the factory in decorative paper. The Air Tight PC-1 Cartridge is further protected in a small wooden padded box with Air Tight faceplate. This Limited Edition 20th Anniversary packaging is only available for the first 30-40 cartridges!
The Air Tight PC-1 Cartridge is an epoch-making Low impedance MC Phono Cartridge!
The ultimate target of an MC cartridge is to derive "High" energy from "Low" impedance circuitry. The Air Tight PC-A Cartridge does this and more! For this purpose, so far many manufacturers, small or large, have employed various sorts of materials and devices such as:
Purification of wire material
New material for housing
Selection of cantilever material
High-energy magnet
Polish on stylus tip
But actually for these 30 years, nothing has been noticeably improved in respect of technical data; to the contrary something adverse has been done in the light of the above-mentioned principle "output voltage vs. internal impedance".
Certainly, compared to the samarium or cerium cobalt magnet used 30 years ago, the neodynium magnet forming today's mainstream is enhanced by as much as 3 times in terms of energy product, but it does not help augment the output voltage.
Through Air Tight's long experience, their ultimate goal was set up to clear the barriers: 2.5 ohms at internal impedance & 0.6mV at output voltage, and our bold challenge started here to work out a solution to this theme; that means, the high source impedance (resistive components of coil) causes considerable consumption of the generated energy in the inside of the coils, whilst small output voltage yields transmission loss to the next stages including interconnections, thus inevitably deteriorating signal quality and increasing noise components. Nevertheless, it is mechanically and physically impossible to increment the output voltage of today's MC cartridge up to the 3mV - 5mV level due to load amount imposed on the vibration system.
Air Tight PC-1 Cartridge reviews:
"Until he heard the Air Tight PC-1, Jonathan Valin thought the new $4500 London Reference moving-iron cartridge was the best on the market, because of its amazing transient speed and natural tone color. (Indeed, the London Reference would have been co-winner of this year's award had it been formally reviewed.) But the Air Tight moving coil goes the London one better in several aspects of sound reproduction, flat out beating it in staging, trackability, and, even transient response (though not in lifelike timbres). How the PC-1 manages this has to do with its extremely low internal impedance and the high-saturation flux density and permeability of its magnets. Folks, you've never heard attack like this before in an analog playback system. Pizzicatos and sforzandos are reproduced with a "rightness" that simply sets a new standard of speed and resolution in moving coils. Like the London Reference, the Air Tight PC-1 is a hi-fi gem that raises the stakes (on the analog side) in the great, ongoing, analog-versus-digital horse race." - 2006 Product of the Year Award Winner, The Absolute Sound Issue 168, January 2007
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