Coil / Wire Material
Coil/wire material identifies the conductor wound into a cartridge’s signal-generating coils, such as copper or silver.
These are internal windings, not the external wires connecting the cartridge to the tonearm. The coil former is the support around which wire is wound; coil layers describe how the windings are arranged.
Coil / Wire Material — Cartridge
Read the whole material description. Silver-plated copper is copper with a silver coating, not solid silver. OFC means oxygen-free copper; PCOCC identifies copper made by the Ohno continuous-casting process. Keep stated purity grades and manufacturing descriptions when comparing specifications.
A precious metal or higher purity alone does not establish better sound. Choose a phono preamp using the cartridge type, output level and manufacturer’s loading requirements, not the coil metal. Optical cartridges sense light changes instead of using generator coils, so this specification does not apply to them.
Sources
- Coil materials, construction and electrical requirements — Audio-Technica
- Silver-plated copper coils and winding counts — Ortofon
- Coil wire, armature and winding layers — Ortofon
- How optical cartridges detect record movement — DS Audio