Moving Magnet vs Moving Coil Cartridges

In a moving magnet cartridge the magnet moves and the coils are fixed. In a moving coil cartridge the coils move and the magnet is fixed. Everything else on this page is a consequence of that swap.

Coils are heavier than magnets, so a moving coil design uses far fewer turns of wire to keep the moving mass low. Fewer turns means less voltage out. That is the entire trade, and it propagates into your phono stage, your noise floor, your loading options and whether you can change a worn stylus at your kitchen table.

Start with the number that causes everything else

Here is what the makers of the cartridges we cover actually publish for output voltage, measured at 1 kHz and 5 cm/sec:

Every cartridge we can currently source and verify is a magnet-moves design of one kind or another, and every one of them sits between 3.5 and 5.5 mV. Notice the second column: two of these are not strictly “moving magnet” at all. Nagaoka’s is moving permalloy and Grado’s is moving iron. Both behave like an MM as far as your phono stage is concerned, because both put out millivolts and both want a 47 kΩ load.

Where moving coil sits, according to the phono stages

We do not currently list a moving coil cartridge — see the note at the end of this page for why. But we do list two phono stages that support one, and their published gain settings tell you exactly what output range their designers expect to receive.

iFi labels its 72 dB setting “MC V-Low”. A 72 dB gain stage exists because cartridges exist that need it, and the arithmetic below shows what output that implies.

What that gain costs you: Schiit publishes the answer

Gain is not free. Every amplifier stage adds its own noise, and the more gain you ask for, the more of that noise ends up in the signal. Most manufacturers publish a single signal-to-noise figure and leave it there. Schiit publishes one per gain setting, which makes the cost visible:

Twenty-one decibels of signal-to-noise, given up to get the gain a moving coil needs. Distortion rises fivefold over the same range. Both figures are Schiit’s own, on the same page, for the same box.

iFi’s numbers tell a similar story from a different angle: 91 dB(A) on MM, 89.6 dB(A) on MC Low, and 78.6 dB(A) on MC V-Low. The quieter the cartridge, the noisier the stage that has to amplify it.

This is the part of the MM-versus-MC argument that almost never appears, and it is published in plain sight by both manufacturers.

Loading: two different problems

A moving magnet cares about capacitance. Its coil has real inductance — Ortofon publishes 700 mH and 1.3 kΩ DC resistance for the 2M Red — and that inductance forms a resonant circuit with the capacitance of your tonearm cable and phono input. Get the capacitance wrong and you move a peak around in the treble.

This is why every MM maker publishes a capacitance recommendation and they do not agree: Audio-Technica asks for 100–200 pF, Ortofon for 150–300 pF, Nagaoka for 100 pF. It is also why the Fluance PA10’s fixed 100 pF and the Pro-Ject Phono Box’s fixed 120 pF are a real constraint, while the Mani 2’s selectable 47/100/150/200 pF is a real feature.

A moving coil cares about resistance. Its coil is tiny, its inductance is low, and capacitance stops mattering much. What matters is the resistive load, which is why the Mani 2 offers 200 Ω, 47 Ω and 38 Ω alongside the standard 47 kΩ. Those three low values exist for moving coils and for nothing else.

The stylus replacement difference

On a moving magnet, the stylus, cantilever and magnet are one removable assembly. Audio-Technica publishes a replacement stylus part number for every VM95: the AT-VMN95E, AT-VMN95EN, AT-VMN95ML. You pull the old one off and push the new one on, with no alignment required — which is also why the AT-VM95ML upgrade path is so cheap: you are buying a stylus, not a cartridge.

Grado describes the Green4 as having a “user-replaceable stylus assembly” too. Nagaoka publishes that the MP-110 body accepts the MP-100 and MP-110 stylus assemblies.

On most moving coils the coils are attached to the cantilever, so replacing the stylus means replacing the moving system — which typically means sending the cartridge back to its maker for a rebuild or retip. We are not going to quote a price or a turnaround for that, because it varies by manufacturer and we have no published figure to cite. But it is a structural difference in ownership cost, not a detail.

Which should you buy?

Buy moving magnetif your phono stage is built into your turntable, your amplifier or your speakers. Every one of those built-in stages we have specifications for is MM-only: Audio-Technica’s decks publish 36 dB, the Yamaha A-S501 publishes an MM input at 3.0 mV, the Marantz PM6007 publishes MM at 2.2 mV, and the Denon AVR-X1800H publishes MM at 2.5 mV. None of them mention moving coil at all. Plugging a 0.14 mV cartridge into a 36 dB stage produces something almost inaudible.

Consider moving coilonly once you own a stage that publishes a gain setting above about 60 dB and a resistive loading option — and go in knowing that the manufacturer’s own noise figures fall by roughly 20 dB at that setting, and that the stylus is not a part you swap yourself.

Why we do not currently recommend a specific moving coil cartridge

Because we could not put one on this page under our own rules. Our method requires a currently purchasable product with manufacturer-published specifications we can link. We have not found a moving coil that clears both bars in the price band this site covers, so rather than name one we cannot source properly, we are naming none.

The two phono stages above will accept one when you find it. That is as far as we can honestly take you.