You may remember when we said a fond farewell to our beloved Audio Technica AT33SA cartridge line — a range we had sold very successfully for nine years. The top model carried an excellent Shibata stylus profile, genuinely helpful with surface noise, and gave that lovely, colourful, saturated sound consistent with Audio Technica cartridges.
Well — its successor has arrived. The AT33xMLB has been on our Rega Planar 6 RS Edition for the past couple of weeks, and the initial impressions are very promising.
What’s Changed
The AT33xMLB shares the boron cantilever with its predecessor. It adds threaded mounting apertures for easy fitting and comes with a very secure stylus guard. The gold colour scheme is also very smart — it looks exactly as it should in a presentation box of this quality.
The significant change is the stylus profile. There is no Shibata in this range. Instead it sports a nude microlinear stylus — which should in theory be more tolerant of less than perfect alignment and VTA. That makes it a particularly interesting proposition for Rega owners and users of other decks where arm adjustment is less straightforward.
Early Impressions
It is presently gracing our Rega Planar 6 RS Edition, both looking and sounding the part. Its character is still evolving — a cartridge needs time to settle — but after a few more LP sides we will report back properly.
What we can say already: this is a truly great cartridge for a less than exorbitant price, from a perfectionist company with a long history of getting these things right.
Worth Considering If
You are looking to move up to a moving coil cartridge for the first time, you have an older moving coil that needs replacing, or you run a Rega or similar deck where precise VTA adjustment is limited.
We will follow this up once the cartridge has had proper running-in time. In the meantime, if you’d like to discuss it or arrange an audition, call Andrew on 0191 406 7070 or send us an enquiry via our Contact page.