BIN 215 Phono Cartridge - 1.7mV High Output MC cartridge
The BIN 215 is a product of intent and serendipity. For decades we had aspired for a Moving Coil cartridge that is unpretentiously musical - just like the Small and Large Advent Speakers1 in the Seventies that became standards of high excellence despite their very modest price. On my meager part-time job, I was able to set aside and afford them as a student at DePaul University in Chicago. The BIN 215 was conceived and designed during the pinnacle age of phono cartridges and is thus founded on the exuberance, best practices and exclusive knowledge of that golden and fertile time. Revived with additional learning, select newer parts, tight tolerances and old world craftsmanship, the BIN 215 like vintage years of superior wine has improved with age to become the best in doing what it does - nothing at all but sweet authentic music extracted from the grooves!
Serendipity and auspiciousness are courtesy of Sugano San. He introduced me to Masao Okada-San, the cartridge grand master of Excel Sound fame, the well-spring of many highly regarded cartridges. With the BIN cartridges, Okada-San had full control of product development. We wanted the BIN to be his best effort at an affordable, world-class High-Output MC cartridge. We wanted a MC product that MM users could eaily, and without encumbrance transition to and enjoy MC sound quality. Its sound quality thus bears Okada-San's DNA as can be heard in his later works with their HANA cartridges.
LP GEAR BIN 215 Comparative
The Supex 901 Super High Output MC cartridge2 is legendary. This 35-year old cartridge transcends time and sounds astonishing even today with its ability to reproduce musical passages with poise, timbral sophistication and picturesque spatial placement.
It plays with silken musical ease and rightness that lets you enjoy listening for hours - it's like the mind works less to fill in the tonal gaffes. The BIN 215 offers textural and spatial kinship, harmonic richness and flowing timbral accuracy - less silken and in counterpoint slightly more revealing and quicker than the Supex SD 901 Super. Your ears will hear and delight in its delicacy, natural sound quality and eloquence.
LP GEAR BIN 215 Specifications
• Tonearm mount: 1/2 inch
• Type: Moving coil (MC), high output
• Output voltage at 1kHz, 3.54 cm/sec: 1.7 mV
• Frequency response: 15 - 30,000 Hz
• Load impedance: 47 kΩ
• Channel separation at 1 kHz: 23 dB
• Output balance at 1 kHz: <1.0 dB
• Tracking force range: 2.0 - 2.3 g (2.0 g recommended)
• Coil inductance at 1kHz: 630 μH
• Static compliance: 15 x 10-6 cm/dyne measured at 100 Hz
• Dynamic compliance: 10 x 10-6 cm/dyne measured at 100 Hz
• Stylus: Highly polished, precision shaped Special Elliptical diamond
• Stylus shape: 0.3 x 0.7 mil
• Cantilever: Special aluminum alloy
• Vertical tracking angle: 23°
• Dimensions: 17(H) × 17(W) × 24.7(D) mm
• Weight: 4.0 g (5.6 g with brass mounting hardware and shim)
• Accessories included: Stylus protector (x 1), Brass screws (x 2), Brass nuts (x 2), Alignment Protractor, LP Gear 1.2 g Shim
Note: Specifications are subject to change without notice.
Customer Comments
"Where did you get this thing? Breathtaking is not giving it justice!"
"I have never owned any cartridge that does not compress the music until now. I have also never owned anything with the linearity of this cartridge (from the very lowest to the highest...linear)."
"BREATHTAKING! It isn't even broken in and rides on my "lowest" turntable of the assemblage; yet, there is where it will stay. I have never heard the Technics sound like this!"
"I just listened to Sarah McLachlan sing "I Love You" to me. Never have I heard the bass notes of this song so distinctly and yet so much a part of the "reality" of the song. She occupied my listening room while she sang "Angel" as never before."
"The LP Gear BIN 215 is amazing! Thank you very much for supplying such an amazing cartridge. I have 2 cartridges that are 2X the price and one that is 4X...The 215 is better than all of them."
"After one month using the BIN 215 it is consistently surpassing my expectations. All types of music come through perfectly, but one distinguishing feature is its freedom from any treble distortions. Its treble performance is smooth, clean, easy, with a special delicacy. A special cartridge."
"Plugged in the BIN215 on the weekend. Still needs a bit of tweaking but I'm definitely not disappointed. It seems to reign in all the things that I didn't like about the sound I was getting from the Orofon 2m red. First record played was back in black and the sound just made me turn it up louder and louder in search of some harshness in the treble and there just isn't any. Glad to finally have the sound reminiscent of my old Supex 900 series back again."
"The BIN 215 high output moving coil cartridge sounds ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE."
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1 J. Gordon Holt, "The Advent Loudspeaker," Stereophile, Jan 1, 1971.
2 Music listening equipment: Graham Slee Reflex M phono preamp, Graham Slee Elevator EXP headamp, Denon AU-300LC Step-up transformer, Graham Slee Proprius mono amps, Electronic Visionary Systems Ultimate Attenuators Passive Preamp, Odyssey Kismet Reference Amp, Quicksilver Silver 88 mono amps, Roadrunner Digital Turntable Tachometer, Sota Sapphire turntable, Supex SD 901 Super cartridge, Denon DL-103 cartridge, Denon DL-110 cartridge, Grace F-9E cartridge, Audience SE Phono Cable, Audience Ohno speaker cables, Rogers LS3/5A speakers, Audience ClairAudient 1+1 Loudspeakers, Krell LAT 2 speakers, Yamaha NS1000M speakers.