June 17th, 2014—Ortofon today announced the development of the 2M MONO SE cartridge intended as a "tribute" to the upcoming Beatles mono box set.

"The White cartridge" is not otherwise known as "The Beatles", nor does is the stylus a "top loader", nor are there any Beatles or Apple Corp logos on the cartridge—probably due to hesitancy on the part of one or both parties to get involved in a costly and time consuming licensing agreement.

However the press release does say the cartridge resulted from a cooperative effort between Universal Music Group and Ortofon.

The new cartridge has an output of 3.5mV, and is designed to track between 1.4-1.7 grams with 1.5 being optimal.

Most significantly the cartridge features a Shibata stylus capable of tracing every lateral nook and cranny groove inscription. Because there are no vertical modulations in a mono groove, VTA/SRA is not at all critical.

If you are connecting to a stereo phono preamp the usual 47kOhm 150-350pF loading is operative but via a mono connection Ortofon recommends a 23.5kOhm 300-600pF load.

The cartridge will be available only through Ortofon's website at the same time as the box set is introduced in early September. It will be reviewed here soon.

Ortofon says the new cartridge will cost ¢500 or around $677.

In other news, only half of the people reading Part 1 of "The Beatles Get Back to Mono and AAA Vinyl" read Part 2. Is that because it didn't interest you? Or did you not see the link? Let us know please.