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Editors' Choice Award 2024 – The Absolute Sound Magazine
"An All-Around Great Performer"
Ortofon's Quintet Black is the best example of Quintet's overall excellence. The Quintet Black is graced with a Nude Shibata diamond, considered one of the best stylus profiles available, mounted on a high-performance Sapphire cantilever.
The Shibata's slim, highly polished profile allows an exceedingly wide contact area to the walls of the groove and ensures detailed and pure reproduction throughout the spectrum, including even the most high frequency groove information. The Quintet Black will be unfettered by musical genre and will give the closest approach within the Quintet Series to Ortofon's true accuracy in sound.
Award-Winning Performance
The Absolute Sound magazine honored the Ortofon Quintet Black with an Editors' Choice Award for 2024.
"The Quintet Series comprises five low-to-mid-priced moving-coil cartridges that replaces the aging Rondo Series of mc’s. At the top rung is the 0.3mV Quintet Black, which is given the royal treatment with neodymium magnets, a nude Shibata stylus, and a boron cantilever. Sonically, the Quintet Black displays even neutrality across the tonal spectrum with glimmers of midrange warmth. It has both a light touch and control. Low-level information is reproduced with great precision."
"An Exceptional Cartridge"
"The Ortofon Quintet Black S is an exceptional cartridge that I highly recommend to those seeking excellent moving coil performance in this price range. Over time it retrieved more details from my records than I previously thought possible on my system…" observes Malachi Lui, analogplanet.com, June 17, 2019.
"In addition to that, it plays mono records easily and without distortion, making unnecessary a designated mono cartridge. The Quintet Black S is an outstanding value, and because of that, I will buy it and for the foreseeable future happily keep it in my system."
"Recommended Without Reservation"
"The Ortofon Quintet is an all-around great performer for all musical genres," reports Neil Gader, The Absolute Sound magazine, July 11, 2014. "$999 is not chump change but if that's your budget and your phono preamp can do it justice and your tone arm's VTA/SRA is adjustable to optimize the Shibata stylus, the Quintet is recommended without reservation."
"At the end of the day perhaps the greatest tribute I can pay the Quintet Black is that I haven’t felt the urge to quickly return to one of my pricey reference cartridges. I don’t need to tell you that for this analog junkie, that’s really saying something," notes Neil Gader, The Absolute Sound magazine, July 11, 2014.
Easy to Install
Top-mounting of the Quintet cartridges is easy and secure using the screws supplied. The aluminum frame has threaded mounting holes and is fitted easily with the 5mm or 7mm screws depending on the thickness of the headshell.
The Quintet series' right angles, straight lines, stylus visibility, and ample distance between the record surface and the cartridge's bottom will make it easy to mount and align the cartridge and tonearm correctly. The Quintet Series gives excellent results with most common tonearms.
"Top of My Favorite Cartridges List"
"The first thing that strikes you is the bottom end. More presence, more body, more depth, but still lovely and tight," notes DaveyW in his review for audiokarma.org.
"Transients are lightning fast, but I expected this with the stiff Sapphire rod, Shibata tip and relatively low output/lighter coils… But there's still a warmth & body to what is a very expansive, articulate and open presentation."
"I've been rifling through my collection to see what next to throw at it - this is proving to be a most enjoyable task. Still early days, but this is rapidly heading towards the top of my favorite cartridges list."
The Quintet Story
Nothing demonstrates Ortofon's long-standing resilience more than its commitment to the refinement of analog sound quality and its continued development of new cartridge models. Since 1948 Ortofon has introduced about 100 different moving coil models. Ortofon believes that the cartridges in this new series are more than worthy successors to the long line of models that has made Ortofon the global leader in the manufacture and supply of phono cartridges.
The MC Quintet Series is congruent with Ortofon's unrelenting commitment to providing the most precise and accurate reproduction possible without coloration. A special ABS (Acrylonitrile/Butadiene/Styrene) thermoplastic material is used for manufacturing of the body. This lightweight, impact resistant material is very suitable for injection-molding and provides a very durable scratch resistant surface.
Neodymium magnets are implemented to achieve an optimal output. Low internal impedance makes the cartridge less sensitive to load and therefore ensures compatibility with the widest range of preamps and transformers.
"All in All a Superb Cartridge"
"Detail is superb, and some old recordings reveal hidden qualities that other cartridges pass over," reports longtime reviewer VJT1952 at vinylengine.com. "All in all a superb cartridge that will suit any kind of music."
Reviewer minio, also at vinylengine.com, notes, "The Quintet Black is still mesmerising with its lushness and spaciousness - I can't go back. Its winning me over. I've just listened to the Pedlars, Holst Planets and Mary Coughlan - many superlatives!"
