Ortofon S15T

[F575M]

Any opinion from S15T users?

Cheers,

[walpurgis]

I owned one may years ago. Very nice sounding thing, a bit heavy though.

[Barry]

They were the first development by Ortofon after the SPU design. Ortofon dispensed with the integrated headshell used with the SPUs and adopted the standard 1/2" cartridge headshell fixings.

The S15T retained the integral SUT and thus was rather heavy. You also need to use the Ortofon 'springs' to connect between the cartridge pins and those of the headshell. These presumably provide sufficient series inductance to compensate for the capacitance of the tonearm leads.

When introduced they were more expensive than the Ortofon SPUGTE, but the S15T did not remain in the Ortofon catalogue for long. Presumably this was because the lightweight version (the SL15E) was more popular as the SUT was an 'off-board' module that fitted to the tonearm leads at the preamplifer end, minimising problems with resonance between cable capacitance and the inductance of the SUT secondary winding.

I have an S15-TE as well as a couple of SL15Es. Both sound good but for convenience I prefer the SL15Es.

https://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?4205-Manufacturers-Ortofon

[F575M]

A Short History of Early Ortofon Pick-Up Cartridges is an excellent article, very well written, it is the reason I asked about the S15T. I recently bought an early split counterweight 3009 from Steve at Hifihangar, he is also selling a nice S15T and I thought that it would be nice to have it but that cartridge weighs 28 grams and I am not sure that it would be a good choice.