Ortofon MC Quintet S Black Phono Cartridge

"An All-Around Great Performer"

Ortofon's Quintet Black is the best example of Quintet's overall excellence. The Quintet Black is graced with a Nude Shibata diamond, considered one of the best stylus profiles available, mounted on a high-performance Sapphire cantilever.

The Shibata's slim, highly polished profile allows an exceedingly wide contact area to the walls of the groove and ensures detailed and pure reproduction throughout the spectrum, including even the most high frequency groove information. The Quintet Black will be unfettered by musical genre and will give the closest approach within the Quintet Series to Ortofon's true accuracy in sound.

"Recommended Without Reservation"

"The Ortofon Quintet is an all-around great performer for all musical genres," reports Neil Gader, The Absolute Sound magazine, July 11, 2014. "$999 is not chump change but if that's your budget and your phono preamp can do it justice and your tone arm's VTA/SRA is adjustable to optimize the Shibata stylus, the Quintet is recommended without reservation."

"At the end of the day perhaps the greatest tribute I can pay the Quintet Black is that I haven’t felt the urge to quickly return to one of my pricey reference cartridges. I don’t need to tell you that for this analog junkie, that’s really saying something," notes Neil Gader, The Absolute Sound magazine, July 11, 2014.

Easy to Install

Top-mounting of the Quintet cartridges is easy and secure using the screws supplied. The aluminum frame has threaded mounting holes and is fitted easily with the 5mm or 7mm screws depending on the thickness of the headshell.

The Quintet series' right angles, straight lines, stylus visibility, and ample distance between the record surface and the cartridge's bottom will make it easy to mount and align the cartridge and tonearm correctly. The Quintet Series gives excellent results with most common tonearms.

The Quintet Story

Nothing demonstrates Ortofon's long-standing resilience more than its commitment to the refinement of analog sound quality and its continued development of new cartridge models. Since 1948 Ortofon has introduced about 100 different moving coil models. Ortofon believes that the cartridges in this new series are more than worthy successors to the long line of models that has made Ortofon the global leader in the manufacture and supply of phono cartridges.

The MC Quintet Series is congruent with Ortofon's unrelenting commitment to providing the most precise and accurate reproduction possible without coloration. A special ABS (Acrylonitrile/Butadiene/Styrene) thermoplastic material is used for manufacturing of the body. This light-weight, impact resistant material is very suitable for injection-molding and provides a very durable scratch resistant surface.

Neodymium magnets are implemented to achieve an optimal output. Low internal impedance makes the cartridge less sensitive to load and therefore ensures compatibility with the widest range of preamps and transformers.

• Nude Shibata diamond stylus
• High performance sapphire cantilever
• Low output – 0.3 mV
• ABS (Acrylonitrile/Butadiene/Styrene) thermoplastic material body
• Neodymium magnets
• Low internal impedance

• Output voltage at 1000 Hz, 5cm/sec. - 0.3 mV
• Channel balance at 1 kHz - < 1.0 dB
• Channel separation at 1 kHz - > 23 dB
• Channel separation at 15 kHz - > 15 dB
• Frequency range at - 3dB - 20 - 25.000 Hz
• Frequency response 20-20.000 Hz - +/- 1.5 dB
• Tracking ability at 315Hz at recommended tracking force: - 80 µm
• Compliance, dynamic, lateral - 15 µm/mN
• Stylus type - Nude Shibata on Sapphire cantilever
• Stylus tip radius - r/R 6/50 µm
• Tracking force range - 2.1-2.5 g (21-25 mN)
• Tracking force, recommended - 2.3 g (23 mN)
• Tracking angle - 20°
• Internal impedance, DC resistance - 5 Ohm
• Recommended load impedance - > 20 Ohm
• Cartridge body material - ABS/Aluminium
• Coil wire material - Aucurum
• Cartridge color - Black
• Cartridge weight - 9 g

"If you are looking for a MC cartridge that unravels large amounts of transient, harmonic and spatial detail without being overly analytical and one that is "fast" without moving so fast it misses the textures, then the Ortofon Quintet is a great good choice to consider. It's especially neutral tonally, with a rich but not overly rich midrange component – contrary to the bad rap MC cartridges get in some quarters for being 'thin and overly analytical'. The Quintet is neither."

"The Ortofon Quintet is an all around great performer for all musical genres. $999 is not chump change but if that's your budget and your phono preamp can do it justice and your tone arm's VTA/SRA is adjustable to optimize the Shibata stylus, the Quintet is recommended without reservation."

- Neil Gader, The Absolute Sound magazine, July 11, 2014

"At the end of the day perhaps the greatest tribute I can pay the Quintet Black is that I haven’t felt the urge to quickly return to one of my pricey reference cartridges. I don’t need to tell you that for this analog junkie, that’s really saying something."

- Neil Gader, The Absolute Sound magazine, July 11, 2014

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