The Benz Micro Ace SL is a crowd favourite from the labs of Benz Micro in Switzerland. It's also one of the only, if not the only, handmade cartridges built at this price.
The cartridge also incorporates a Nude line-contact diamond, mirror polished. It takes the design breakthroughs from flagship models and uses these technologies in a no-compromise package.
The resulting design is a superb cartridge built for music lovers that has a warm and natural sound through the mid-range with powerful bottom-end extension and smooth high frequencies. But it is also very user friendly and adjustable, giving you the ability to tune the cartridge to get the sound you're looking for.
If you all you want to do, is play music without any distractions, the Ace SL is perfect.
Specifications:
Physical
Cantilever: Solid boron rod: 0.28 mm diameter
Stylus: Nude line-contact diamond, mirror polished
Stylus tip radius: 3 x 60um
Vertical tracking angle (VTA): 20 degrees
Coil: Pure iron cross
Weight 8.8 grams
Electrical
Output voltage: 0.4 mV at 3.54 cm/s
Internal impedance: 12 Ohms
Frequency Response: 20 - 20,000HZ +- 1 db
Channel balance: Better than 0.5 dB
Channel separation: Better than 35 dB at 1kHz
Dynamic
Tracking ability at 315 Hz at a tracking force of 2 grams: 80um
Dynamic compliance: 15 um/mN