Kiseki Blue N.O.S

Recently I was chatting with a phono cartridge manufacturing friend and soon we ended up talking about the special relation many cartridge owners have with their cartridge. And if you think about it, it might be true that a phono cartridge is the most personal part of a sound system.

In the past when I was dealing with European distribution of Koetsu and the manufacturing of Kiseki, the first thing we did after receiving a new batch, was looking at the bodies. With the Onyx / Agaat models of Koetsu and Kiseki, all were different and it was difficult to decide which one was the most beautiful. In our case it was sounding like “This one I don’t sell, that one we also keep, and this is too beautiful … etc etc”. In the end we did not want to sell any of them till we concluded that we had to run a business and sold all of them.

Many years later most of these owners needed a stylus repair or another repair service and only their own original cartridge body was expected to be returned! If you see these cartridge bodies, this is quite understandable. According to my friend, who also does repair phono cartridges, it is also the case, although to a lesser degree, with other cartridges which are having a more general “look”. It simply seems that a phono cartridge is (almost) man’s best personal -audio- friend.

Today I run into a quite special article about a man who wants to turn his ashes into a vinyl record … Maybe weird, but certainly the best way to stay in personal contact with your phono cartridge. Read the article here!