Soundsmith make a new moving-iron phono cartridge for B&O, called S-MMC1

Read the full story in Sterophile with review of the new and improved B&O  cartridge (5 pages)

http://www.stereophile.com/phonocartridges/408sound/index.html

 Why SoundSmith makes B&O cartridge  

Repeated contact with disenfranchised B&O turntable owners unable to get replacements for B&O's proprietary but long-discontinued moving-iron plug-in cartridges inspired Ledermann to contact B&O and seek permission to make them himself.

That was fine with B&O. Unfortunately, they had discarded all the tooling and engineering blueprints, and in B&O's opinion, reverse-engineering from surviving samples would be impossible.

But that's precisely what Ledermann did. His plug-in (akin to P-mount) clones of B&O's original cartridges are now available in a variety of configurations, and continue to sell very well to owners of B&O turntables worldwide.

The new cartridge S-MMC1

After the first rush of orders, when demand had begun to taper off, Ledermann designed a universal mounting adapter for B&O's MMC series, which he calls the SMMC series: from the SMMC4 with diamond elliptical stylus and aluminum cantilever ($149.95), to the top of the line, the limited-edition The Voice ($1599.95), with ruby cantilever, nude contact-line diamond stylus, lower-mass moving iron, and the closest-tolerance measurements. The Voice is built not by Soundsmith's usual team of skilled cartridge crafters but by Ledermann himself. Prior to the introduction of The Voice, the SMMC1 ($749.95) reviewed here was the top of Soundsmith's cartridge line, as had the MMC1 been the top of B&O's.