Nagaoka MP-110 Moving Permalloy Phono Cartridge

The MP-110 shares the same body as the MP-100 — Nagaoka's Moving Permalloy design, where an ultra-light permalloy oscillator rides at the back of the cantilever, energized by a samarium cobalt magnet in the body. The difference is up front: a super-fine polished elliptical bonded diamond with 0.4 x 0.7 mil radii, replacing the MP-100's conical. That narrower contact edge sits deeper in the groove and follows the modulation more accurately, so you get better tracking, more high-frequency information, and noticeably tighter imaging.

What you don't get is the brittle, etched sound that "more detail" usually implies. This is still very much a Nagaoka — warm through the low end, rich in the midrange, and forgiving of the kind of records most of us actually own. It's the cartridge that makes people say their system finally sounds like music instead of a measurement. The classic comparison is the Ortofon 2M Red at a similar price, and plenty of listeners find the Nagaoka the smoother, more composed of the two.

The rest of the practical case is easy. It's the direct descendant of the beloved MP-11, which means decades of refinement behind it. It's a straightforward drop-in for nearly any half-inch mount tonearm, 6.5 grams and 5mV output, so no counterweight drama and no special phono stage required. And the stylus is user-replaceable — a JN-P110 gets you back to new, and you can move up the MP line later without buying a whole cartridge.

Give it 30 hours to settle in. It opens up.

• Moving Permalloy (MM-compatible) design, made in Japan
• Super-fine polished 0.4 x 0.7 mil elliptical bonded diamond stylus
• Samarium cobalt magnet with lightweight aluminum alloy cantilever
• Carbon-fiber-reinforced shoe and anti-ferromagnetic permalloy shield casing
• Improved separation and channel balance over the MP-100
• Replaceable stylus (JN-P110) — upgradeable within the MP series
• Mounting hardware and instructions included