In 1992 I visited Kowloon , Hong Kong and discovered a multitude of audiophile shops nestled into the nooks and crannies of the tech sector. My task at the time was to look for Laserdiscs and to purchase a fiber optic audio cable for said Laserdisc player. This task was accomplished in short order- there was so much to choose from unlike the scarcity of said items back home.
What surprised me was the number of China based brands and especially the fact that I was not familiar with any of them.
Today most North American consumer electronics are made in China or ‘overseas’ but 30 years ago this was not always the norm. Any stigma that may have existed has been eroded because quality has improved considerably and prices have dropped too- making very good quality audio equipment affordable for more consumers than ever before. And that’s a good thing.
Jasmine
茉莉花Jasmine®” is a hardware service provider specializing in the design and development of vinyl systems. It owns core technology of vinyl systems and provides a global, top HiFi turntable brand with R&D services for their entire product line of cartridges, tonearms, phono stages, turntables, etc.,
Jasmine has served well-known brands in more than 40 countries including the United States, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the United Kingdom, repeatedly reported by international authoritative media including the American authoritative audio magazine Positive-Feedback.Their mission is to cultivate and spread vinyl culture. Part of their plan is to succeed in this endeavor by offering quality turntable cartridges at affordable prices and so excitedly we got our hands on their new 24$ USD/ 32.69$ (at time of posting) CAD Jasmine M1 cartridge that surprisingly comes fitted with gold plated lead connectors.
Packaged carefully and arriving safely and quickly, our review cartridge made great first impressions. The box which holds the cartridge is no nonsense, attractive, easy to open and safely holds its contents including mounting nuts and washers. We wish more manufacturers would take this K.I.S.S. approach.
Impressions
The M1 is a very handsome moving magnet cartridge with a style similar to the Ortofon line of MM’s fondly remembered from the 1980’s and often found on West German Dual turntables of that era.
The elongated ‘pencil’ layout of the cartridge and stylus offers benefits of light weight, low 2.5 gram tracking force and ease of mounting to most headshells.
Because of the style throwback we decided to mount the M1 on a suitably vintage (though freshly serviced and calibrated) Dual turntable and dig out our favorite LP’s used for evaluating cartridges. In our experience the best judgment of equipment updates is to use our ears and a familiar record.
Though technical specifications and measurements are important (see below) it is quite illuminating to discover how changing your cartridge and stylus can affect what you are able to hear. For example, we found the M1 brought out more detail in the bottle percussion on Michael Jackson’s Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough (Off The Wall original issue LP). We have always been able to hear them but this is the first time we were able to hear how LONG they play throughout the track.
Bass response was also very solid. In our test room, we have dual Mono PSB Alpha subwoofers crossed over at 80HZ and our main speakers are Magnepan SMMG panels. Using Thomas Dolby’s The Flat Earth LP we were impressed with the solid yet warm bass response both on tracks featuring electronic synthesized bass (The Flat Earth original issue LP) and electric bass guitar (Dissidents).
The Jasmine competes against a number of affordable, yet decently performing cartridges- including the Audio Technica AT-3600L but to our ears and based on the manufacturer’s specifications, the Jasmine is the better choice. For the Silo, Jarrod Barker.
