The Ortofon Stylus Concorde Music Black is the replacement stylus for the Concorde Music Black cartridge and the top tier of the Concorde Music range. Sitting above the Bronze, Blue and Red styli, it pairs a nude Shibata diamond with an aluminium cantilever to extract the finest detail from a record groove. The same stylus also fits any Concorde Music cartridge body, so it can be used to step a Red, Blue or Bronze body up to Black-grade performance.
Nude Shibata Stylus
The Shibata profile was originally developed for high-frequency CD-4 quadraphonic playback and presents a long, narrow contact line to the groove wall. Compared with elliptical and fine-line stylus shapes lower down the range, the Shibata reads more of the modulated groove information, recovers more high-frequency detail and reduces wear on each playback. The diamond is nude rather than tipped, with the whole working tip mounted directly on the cantilever for lower effective tip mass and faster transient response.
Aluminium Cantilever
An aluminium tube cantilever transmits groove modulations to the generator with low mass and high stiffness. Combined with the Shibata tip, it gives the Black stylus its characteristic balance of accuracy, resolution and rhythmic precision.
Concorde Music System
All Concorde Music styli are interchangeable with all Concorde Music cartridge bodies, so the Black stylus can be used as a direct replacement on a Concorde Music Black, or as an upgrade path on a Red, Blue or Bronze. The cartridge itself plugs straight into any SME-style headshell or integrated headshell tonearm without alignment tools, making it equally at home in a hi-fi or DJ setup. The stylus is also available in a higher-grade LVB 250 version with a different tip and Ortofon's Replicant 100 cantilever as a further upgrade.
