Goldring Announces New E4 Cartridge Targeting Budget or Midrange Turntables

Goldring introduced its new flagship E Series moving magnet cartridge, the E4. Designed as a a cost-effective upgrade for any modern budget or midrange turntable, the new Goldring E4 represents the pinnacle of the E Series engineering, focused on performance. The E4 is designed to be compatible with all medium-to-high-mass tonearms of the type found on the majority of budget to midrange turntables.  Because the new Goldring E4 cartridge is constructed using the same high-quality core as the other E Series cartridges, the E4 is ideal both for those who wish to upgrade an obsolete cartridge in its entirety or those who want to boost the performance of their existing E Series cartridge by replacing the stylus.

A new super-elliptical nude diamond stylus features lower effective tip mass, improved rigidity and better high frequency detail retrieval than ‘bonded’ elliptical alternatives. The lightweight and superior stiffness of the hollow aluminum cantilever allows the stylus to trace medium-to-high frequencies with greater accuracy. Magnetic Duplex Technology allows a more accurate transcription of the stereo groove which results in a more accurate soundstage. 

The ‘Azimuth’ describes the angle that the vertical centre line of the stylus makes with the record’s surface, and it must be exactly perpendicular to the groove. Owners of budget and midrange turntables usually have no facility to adjust the azimuth, so it’s vital the cartridge has been precisely adjusted before it’s fitted to the turntable’s tonearm – badly adjusted azimuth can cause increased crosstalk and uneven channel balance. Unlike most designs, the E4 allows micro-adjustments to be made during the production process, ensuring each cartridge leaves the Goldring factory with optimized channel balance and crosstalk settings, and needing no further azimuth adjustment.

The E4 features a ‘nude’ super-elliptical stylus of just 7.6 x 18 microns (0.3 x 0.7 mil), cut and polished from a single homogeneous piece of diamond. This makes for a lower effective tip mass of improved rigidity, which in turn means its ability to retrieve high-frequency detail is dramatically improved when compared to the ‘bonded’ elliptical stylus alternative. It’s far less likely to ‘mis-track’ or overshoot when tracing high-frequency groove modulations, and because of its finely polished 7.6-micron profile it can more effectively fit into closely packed inner grooves. Lower distortion, improved transient response and a flat frequency response all contribute to superior fidelity when compared to any price-comparable alternative.  To complement its low tip-mass stylus, the E4 features a hollow aluminum cantilever tube. The lightweight and superior stiffness of the material allows the stylus to trace medium-to-high frequencies with greater accuracy, while simultaneously reducing distortion and mis-tracking.

Stereo information is contained in a single ‘V’-shaped groove that has perpendicular sidewalls angled at 45 degrees. Conventional cartridges, which use a single large magnet interacting with two vertically mounted coils (one for left-channel information, one for right) to extract a stereo signal from the groove, can permit high levels of crosstalk – and consequently only a modest amount of left- and right-channel separation. 

The E4 uses Goldring's Magnetic Duplex Technology that positions two low-mass magnets at the same angles as the coils – so each magnet interacts only with its partnering coil. This allows the E4 to transcribe the information in the groove more accurately, and results in greater stereo separation and a more accurate soundstage.

The Goldring E4 cartridge will be on show at the High End Show 2023 in Munich (May 18–21) in room A (Atrium) 4.1, F110. The Goldring E4 moving magnet cartridge is available in June/July 2023, priced at €259 / $299. The Goldring E4 stylus is available for €185.00 / $275. 
www.goldringusa.com