Created out of the desire to make a very high performance design at an affordable price, the Carmen MKII was crafted to have unparalleled purity of tone and ultra-smooth presentation. Just slightly lush with a well-developed midrange, the Carmen MKII is surprisingly pleasing and will seduce you into long, late listening sessions.

The new Carmen MKII features a new proprietary Soundsmith Aluminum alloy cantilever that has unique dualistic properties of both stiffness in the lower registers, and just enough damping for extended frequencies to allow the purity of tone to be realized  - much more linearity and lower distortion to compliment the tiny internal moving mass and our enhanced  constant contact damping system.

The stylus used is a large part of what makes it special; an ultra-low mass occlusion free nude diamond cut and polished into a true hyper-elliptical shape. The combination of low tip mass and the Fixed Coil design gives the Carmen MKII a tremendous resolution advantage over MC designs selling for more than twice the price. Housed in a handmade solid Ebony case, the Carmen MKII delivers.

• Cartridge Type: Fixed Coil
• Output: High
• Available As Dual Coil Mono: Yes
• Stylus: Nude Elliptical, 0.120mm SQ
• Radius of curvature: 6 x 17 m
• Cantilever: Aluminum Alloy
• Recommended tracking force: 12mN / 1.2 gm (high), 14mN / 1.4 gm (medium)
• Effective tip mass: 0.35 mg
• Compliance: 28 m/mN (high), 22 m/mN (medium)
• Frequency response: 20-20,000 Hz ± 2.5 dB
• Channel separation (stereo only): 1000 Hz >26 dB, 50-15,000 >20 dB
• Channel difference: <1.6 dB (Stereo), <1.0 dB (Mono)
• Output voltage: 2.12 mV
• Cartridge weight: 6.8 grams
• Loading: 47 k

Reviews:

• HiFi Pig review
• Stereophile Review