Phasemation PP-1000 Cartridge

number95

Well-Known Member
May 14, 2014
384
7
250
I recently borrowed PP-1000 cartridge from a good friend (that is what friends are for!) and finally installed it yesterday and my initial impressions are nothing short of impressive. Again thanks to my friend that the cartridge has left its burning in behind so from the first minute I had the chance to assess its contribution and character. I was surprised from the first minute for how it performed. Excellent control and tonality, easiness, bold musical body. The cartridge makes everything right, but if I need to define how it sounds just by one word, it is balance. It is not the most detailed cartridge as well as fastest transients, that honor goes to Lyras for me, it is not the most neutral one, my Zyx is the champ there still, it does not excel on any frequency band either, eg my Ikeda Kai betters it in high frequencies. What it does is getting a level in any sound parameter close to the best cartridges so that its overall performance is a no compromise sound hence amazing musicality. But just saying PP1000 closer to more expensive ones is an understatement as it makes something special in my view. The soundstage is huge, extremely palpable and images are very meaty and fleshy even it equals or betters any cartridge in this area that I have heard.

PP-1000 is a heavy cartridge (14.3 gr) with not a high compliance of 8, so I presume the best out of this cartridge should be via a heavier and rigid tonearm rather than light to medium weight tonearms. I tried it with Ikeda 407 tonearm which is heavy and rigid more suitable with PP-1000 rather than my Graham Elite. My humble experience of vtf is 1.85-1.90gr is sweet spot where the tonality and imaging is most optimized.

Interestingly, I have not found too much of an info at the web when I searched for PP-1000 which seems the company Phasemation and the cartridge are not well known with exception of Far East, so it is surprisingly underrated. Given my two reference cartridges which are much more expensive than PP-1000, I consider it a huge bargain and again considering this cartridge with a cliche like "good for the price" will be an understatement. Without hesitation, this is one of the best cartridges that I tried or heard regardless of price.
 
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