Sumiko Phono Cartridges is pleased to premiere Wellfleet, the newest addition to the Rainier collection. The brand has applied and upgraded its award-winning design of the Moonstone cartridge, retuning the suspension for optimal performance of a nude elliptical diamond with the existing generator and resonance-optimized housing found in the rest of the Rainier series.
Wellfleet utilizes a highly polished nude elliptical stylus, eliminating the bonding between the stylus tip and shank. With the new assembly, excessive mass in the shank is cut away to further reduce tip mass, resulting in a faster, more direct, and more accurate response of the stylus’ movement by the cantilever and magnet. Sonically, this increases speed and focuses central images, pulling them toward the listener with a heightened sense of detail.
With the Wellfleet, vocals are immediate, clear, and detailed, and the warmth of human vocal work becomes more apparent with hints of rasp and emphasized subtleties, boosted by tight and well-controlled bass. The listener is able to identify distinct instrumentation such as the rattle of snare wires, or the woody twang of vintage acoustic guitars. Listeners will hear an improvement in surface noise and sense a more distanced backdrop, facilitating a deeply suspended image.
Mass & Dimension | 6.5g, 17.2 x 18.8 x 29mm (WxHxD) |
Stylus | 0.3 x 0.7mil Nude Elliptical |
Cantilever | ?0.5mm Aluminum Pipe |
Coils | High-Purity Copper |
Internal Impedance | 1,130Ω |
Load Impedance | 47kΩ |
Frequency Response | 12Hz ? 33kHz |
Output | 3.0mV |
Channel Separation | 30dB @ 1kHz |
Channel Balance | 0.5dB @ 1kHz |
Capacitance | 100pF ? 200pF |
Compliance | 13×10-6cm/dyn @ 100Hz |
Vertical Tracking Angle | 26° |
Tracking Force Range | 1.8g ? 2.2g |
Recommended Tracking Force | 2.0g |