Kandid MC Cartridge

Kandid is Linn's best moving coil (MC) cartridge yet, designed to extract as much musical detail from your vinyl records as possible. It replaces the Akiva, which has flown the marque’s flag for cartridges for a good few years now. It is the cartridge of choice for a top spec Sondek LP12, the Klimax LP12.

The Kandid differs in several significant ways, the most visually conspicuous of which is its new ‘naked’ generator assembly. It has long been known that cartridge bodies induce colouration. So designers have periodically experimented with all sorts of housing materials, but the Kandid dispenses with a conventional body altogether. Potentially, this makes installation hazardous but the Kandid’s clever stylus guard is more like a ‘body guard’, which makes fitting it a relatively easy process using the triple point mount.

Linn have kept the weight of the cartridge down by using a plastic front yoke screw rather than metal. As well as allowing the counterweight to be moved closer to the bearing point which gives a quicker reaction to changes in the vinyl, using a plastic screw eliminates any magnetic interference to the delicate coils in the cartridge.

Another notable innovation in Kandid is the angle of the mechanical body and the tracking angle of the cantilever which have also been moved from 23° to 20°. This means that when it’s placed under tracking force on the LP surface, the flux lines remain symmetrical, ensuring that mechanical forces on the coils and iron core remain equal in all directions, avoiding any deformation.

Kandid uses the finest nude diamond, micro-ridge stylus and benefits from a ceramic boron cantilever for ultra low mass and extremely high rigidity. The suspension mechanism supports hand-wound coils secured in a high-precision rigid assembly, terminated with gold contacts on flying leads for superb signal transmission. The coils in the Kandid also feature an extra winding to increase output.

Please contact us to arrange a demonstration.