Ethos is a truly high-end cartridge featuring a vital-shank, nude-diamond stylus. This polyhedral, line-contact profile was chosen because it has a very low tip-mass and a large contact area whilst being very narrow from front to back; even enabling the undistorted retrieval of ultrasonic frequencies in a recording. In order to properly process this information, at the heart of the Ethos cartridge is Goldring's hand-built GOL-1 moving-coil generator. Featuring a hand-wound cross-shaped, soft-iron armature and married to a low resonance aircraft aluminium chassis, each one is precision tuned by our expert craftsmen to achieve our best ever level of performance. The result is that one becomes simply immersed in the musical experience ...and that's our whole Ethos.
The line-contact diamond profile provides a large contact area with the groove wall, improving the retrieval of high frequency detail and reducing groove wear. Its vital-shaped shank has a low tip mass giving the design exceptionally good trackability.
The stiff and lightweight alloy cantilever tube has been tuned to the ideal length for cartridge stability and ride height. Its length has been optimised to reduce inertia in the suspension system and improve trackability.
The coils are wound around a cross-shaped armature of pure, high-permeability, Swedish iron. The reduced unsprung mass improves the ability for the stylus to track the groove wall and the coil separation minimises cross-talk, improving the stereo image.
The new damper pad uses a bespoke butyl rubber compound to keep the system critically damped. Combined with an expertly tensioned tie-wire, the cartridge remains ultra-stable even during the loudest and most complex passages.
A very light and powerful neodymium magnet is clamped between two pole shoes creating a perfectly uniform magnetic field gap, within which the cross armature is suspended. This gives Ethos its typically flat and extended frequency response.
The body is precision-milled from a low density, rigid, aircraft grade aluminium which helps to maintain a low effective mass and enables it to dissipate unwanted resonances into the tonearm where they are effectively 'grounded'.
