Ortofon - Quintet Black S MC Phono Cartridge

The top of the Quintet range: a nude Shibata diamond on a sapphire cantilever, wound with Ortofon’s Aucurum gold-plated copper.

Every Quintet shares the same 9g body with a threaded aluminium frame, neodymium magnets, the same 15 µm/mN compliance, the same 2.1 to 2.5g tracking force window with 2.3g recommended, the same 20 to 25kHz frequency range and the same minimum load of 20 ohms. Ortofon designs the internal impedance deliberately low so the cartridge is forgiving about phono stage loading, and the practical consequence is that moving up the range never means relearning setup.

Ortofon calls the Black S the best example of the Quintet’s overall excellence. The Shibata’s slim, highly polished profile allows an exceedingly wide contact area to the walls of the groove and ensures detailed, pure reproduction throughout the spectrum, including the highest frequency groove information. It is the tightest-specified model in the family, with channel balance inside 1.0dB.

It is also the only Quintet whose cantilever changes. Where the three models below it use aluminium, the Black S uses sapphire, and the coil wire is Ortofon’s Aucurum — a gold-plated 6NX copper.

A note on the name, since customers ask. Ortofon does not publish what the S stands for. The documented history is that it denotes the sapphire cantilever: Ortofon moved from boron to sapphire across models outside its Exclusive series during an industry-wide boron shortage around 2016, and the plain Quintet Black was rebadged Black S at that point. The plain Black is gone from Ortofon’s catalogue entirely. If you are ever offered an old-stock plain Quintet Black, it will have a boron cantilever rather than sapphire — a real difference worth checking.

Features

• Nude Shibata diamond, r/R 6/50 µm, on a sapphire cantilever
• Coils wound with Ortofon’s Aucurum gold-plated 6NX copper wire
• The tightest channel balance in the family, inside 1.0dB
• 0.3mV output; 5 ohm internal impedance
• Neodymium magnets
• 9g body, 2.3g recommended tracking force, load above 20 ohms
• The only Quintet with a cantilever other than aluminium

Specifications

• Type: Moving coil stereo cartridge
• Output Voltage: 0.3mV at 1kHz, 5cm/sec
• Channel Balance at 1kHz: Less than 1.0dB
• Channel Separation at 1kHz: Greater than 23dB
• Channel Separation at 15kHz: Greater than 15dB (Ortofon Quintet brochure)
• Frequency Range: 20Hz – 25,000Hz at −3dB
• Frequency Response: 20Hz – 20kHz, ±1.5dB
• Tracking Ability at 315Hz: 80 µm
• Compliance: 15 µm/mN, dynamic lateral
• Stylus Type: Ortofon renders this row as nude Shibata on sapphire cantilever
• Stylus Tip Radius: r/R 6/50 µm
• Cantilever: Sapphire
• Coil Wire: Aucurum — Ortofon’s gold-plated 6NX copper wire
• Magnets: Neodymium
• Tracking Force Range: 2.1 – 2.5g
• Recommended Tracking Force: 2.3g
• Tracking Angle: 20°
• Internal Impedance, DC Resistance: 5 Ω
• Recommended Load Impedance: Greater than 20 Ω
• Cartridge Body Material: Ortofon contradicts itself on this. The specification tables on both its sites say PC, the Quintet Bronze product prose says a special ABS thermoplastic, Ortofon’s own Quintet brochure says ABS with aluminium, and its UK distributor describes a lightweight ABS body around an aluminium core. We are not going to state one as fact
• Colour: Black
• Cartridge Weight: 9g
• Mounting: Half inch top mount with threaded holes; 5mm or 7mm screws supplied
• The “S”: Ortofon publishes no definition. It denotes the sapphire cantilever, adopted when Ortofon moved away from boron across its non-Exclusive models around 2016. The plain Quintet Black it replaced is no longer in Ortofon’s catalogue
• Stylus Replacement: Ortofon states plainly that the styli in moving coil cartridges are non-replaceable, so there is no swap-in stylus for this cartridge. What Ortofon runs instead is an Exchange Service through participating authorised dealers: a worn or damaged MC cartridge — any condition, bought anywhere — is taken in at 25% of the current list price against the purchase of a new Ortofon cartridge of equivalent or better model. Note that is a credit against a new purchase, not a repair price. Ortofon also runs a separate Repair Service for out-of-warranty MC cartridges
• Tonearm Matching: Ortofon publishes no recommended tonearm effective mass for this model. Its general guidance is that an arm of 10g effective mass or below counts as low mass and 11 to 25g as moderate mass, that high mass requires low compliance and vice versa, and that the target is a cartridge and arm system resonance between 7 and 12Hz, with 10Hz recommended
• Stylus Life: Ortofon rates its styli at up to 1000 hours with proper care. This is a general figure across the range rather than a per-model specification
• Origin: Ortofon A/S of Nakskov, Denmark. Ortofon states that all its cartridges are designed and crafted in Denmark
• Warranty: Ortofon publishes no warranty period for its moving coil cartridges on its own site. Ortofon Inc. covers cartridges bought from an authorised US dealer for one year against defects in workmanship and materials, excluding expendable items
• Not Published: Any Ortofon definition of the letter S; channel separation at 15kHz on the product page; recommended tonearm effective mass
• Note: Trade press has reported the newer MC X series as replacing the Quintet range. Ortofon has published no such statement, and the Quintet models remain listed, priced and in stock on Ortofon’s own sites and in its Exchange Service table. The nearest thing to a manufacturer comment is an Ortofon engineer telling a magazine that the MC X takes performance to another level over the old Quintet range — a performance comparison, not a discontinuation