London Decca has been building cartridges under the London brand name and refurbishing all Decca FFSS Heads, Tonearms, and Decca Cartridges for 20 years. The original Decca company was started in the 19th century, but its first involvement with music was with a portable record player which has strong historical rots being used in the World War 1 Trenches for the troops.
London Decca Cartridges
Further Wartime roots were established between 1939 and 1945 where during World War 2, Decca was asked to design and manufacture systems to identify submarines. The first LP record (mono) came in 1951 followed by the stereo in 1958. Throughout the 70s and 80s, the brand grew and designed various iconic audiophile products.
“The voices…I’d swear they’re in the room. There’s no escaping it. The London Reference…is the most involving cartridge I’ve ever heard.” (Hi-Fi News)
London Decca Maroon
London Decca Maroon is a traditional Decca design; it’s a handmade British MC Cartridge that uses the spherical stylus and the tie-wire design. However, The London Decca Maroon uses a different build technique to other manufactures.
The difference is that other manufacturers’ cartridges mount the stylus to a cantilever with the short end attached to a coil of wire or magnet. The Maroon as a whole offers a 5mV output with an output impedance of 2k ohms and a load impedance of 47k ohms.
London Decca Gold
London Decca Gold is a handmade British MC Phono Cartridge that uses an elliptical stylus, with the same generator and similar housing of London Decca’s top-of-the-range Super Gold model. The frequency range is from 20Hz up to 40 kHz. What sets the gold apart from the Maroon is that the London Decca Gold has an elliptical stylus, whereas the Maroon has a spherical stylus.
Gold styluses tend to be more sought after because they can make contact with a larger groove area on the record’s surface. This makes it a little more precise than a spherical stylus. An elliptical stylus also has an improved frequency response enabling a wider range of your music to be recreated for your enjoyment. The Gold delivers the same specs as the Maroon – 5mV output with an impedance of 2k ohms and a load impedance of 47k ohms.
London Decca Super Gold Phono
London Decca Super Gold Phono cartridge uses a line-contact, grain-oriented diamond stylus that is similar to London Decca’s Jubilee Cartridge. The Super-Gold aims to offer 90% of Jubilee’s unrivalled musical performance, which is considered to be one of the best performing cartridges. The Super-Gold is one of London Decca’s top-spec phono cartridges.
Unlike the Gold, it uses a line-contact, polished, grain-oriented diamond stylus that is similar to the Jubilees. London Super Gold doesn’t mount the stylus as most manufacturers do with the long cantilever fulcrum point design. Instead, the stylus is attached directly to magnetically active metal support just a few microns thick that passes through the centre of the mains generating coil positioned about 1mm above the stylus. The result is a breath-taking, lifelike performance.
London Decca Jubilee
London Decca Jubilee sits in the upper half of its range being one of the brand’s most coveted phono cartridges. It more than impresses when it comes to performance. Made from a single piece of aluminium, Jubilee uses a line-contact, grain-oriented diamond stylus.
The unrivalled performance earnt Jubilee its reputation as one of the best performing cartridges. Diamond Styli allow for more precise tracking, improved frequency response, improved phase response and lower distortion particularly in hard-to-track inner grooves.
Due to this design, London Jubilee has a lower moving mass than either MC or MM cartridge designs and the stylus motion isn’t transformed to a smaller value as in long cantilever/rubbery fulcrum point designs. This allows for a smoother and silkier output.
London Reference MC
Finally, we come to the top-of-the-range Reference MC Phono Cartridge. It uses an exclusive line-contact, grain-oriented diamond stylus, and the same unique no-cantilever design as the Jubilee model to get the best performance from your turntable.
In doing so, this ground-breaking cartridge doesn’t sound like anything else on the market delivering stunningly beautiful audio performance at all times. Unlike most cartridge designs, the London Reference uses a light, thin (just a few microns thick), short, magnetically active metal foil that holds the Reference’s exclusive stylus in place again all aiming for a lower moving mass for smoother recreation at the point of contact.
Plus the stylus motion isn’t transformed to a smaller value like in long cantilever/rubbery fulcrum point designs, which is said to make the sound dynamically compressed and lacking in transient attack. Instead, the sound from the Reference is punchy with vivid transients and a wide-open and dynamic feel to the music at all times.