Mono

My vinyl world just got rocked recently and thought I'd share.

If you avoided seeking out mono records and buying a mono cart like I did for years, it's actually a lot more affordable than you might think and the benefits can really pay off with less surface noise and music like it was originally meant to be heard.

Maybe you bought an old mono record or two and found it too noisy even though you thought it looked practically pristine. Maybe you heard on the Steve Hoffman board from the man himself that a Y cable or mono switch on your stereo are the same thing. Maybe you heard that mono carts can ruin your stereo records (AFAIK it should really only be the old old mono carts that did this). Maybe you bought a new production mono Beatles/Hendrix/Miles Davis record on hype and thought it sounded meh or didn't image all that well. I want to set the record straight, a lot of this stuff is simply leap of faith, based on misinformation and you just have to believe me that you should give it a shot. When I got started with vinyl I didn't even register that mono stuff would be worth the effort, it was kind of hard and intimidating to find mono records.

My mono cart is a super affordable Audio Technica Mono3/LP, maybe around $120ish new and not all that popular of a seller. It's a heavy tracker at 2 grams vtf and likes a heavyish massed arm. .7 mil elliptical, aluminum cantilever blah blah. Despite what google machine says, it is actually a HOMC so any MM stage will do the job. It plays mono records properly ignoring the vertical grooves of the record. This means we can get way less surface noise on those old mono records and due to the modern suspension design, it wont damage your stereo records. It simply sounds superb like a way more expensive cart would and really didn't cost me all that much, way good bang for buck IMO.

Lots of old jazz and classic rock titles are mono. The best ones like OG Bob Dylan and Blue Note may be $$$ but i never realized just how many common ones I actually had hiding in my collection until I looked for them. Many are simply not marked as such so you may want to look to discogs for additional confirmation.

GIve mono a chance and don't waste your time with the silly mono switches and Y cables, you'd be surprised at just how great mono can be.

 

Packing stereo info in a single groove introduces so many problems. Mono makes things easier on the records and the cartridges.

I do wonder though about doing mono with a single channel instead of two channels.

 

Mono records made before the advent of Stereo records had no reason to be labeled as Mono. (Mono was all there was.)