@kemela

Danish company Ortofon began life in 1918 as Electrical Phono Film Company largely concerned with synchronized sound recording at first with one machine for the film and a second for the sound run simultaneously. Eventually picture and sound were able to be put on the same film strip and following this was a whole host of innovations for the booming film industry after the second world war.

Ortofon became involved with improvements to the cutting heads used in the growing gramophone industry and in 1948 produced the world's first moving coil cartridge engineered with characteristics matching the quality of the cutterhead. With the growing popularity of the vinyl LP, Ortofon became increasingly specialized in the gramophone world. Innovation continued over the following decades in both vinyl cutting technology and cartridges for sound reproduction - including the world's first low mass very high compliance magnetic cartridge in 1981 and a high end integrated cartridge in 2011 that connects to the tonearm directly without the need for a headshell or headshell leads.

More recently Ortofon has embraced SLM manufacturing techniques for it's premium cartridges, and diversified further with Ortofon Microtech a B2B division for micro-engineered components.

Ortofon manufactures a wide range of superbly manufactured cartridges and record player related items at all price points. That three-quarters of cartridge sales are in the DJ business is testament to the consistency and quality of the manufacturing. The tiny dimensions of mechanical compoennts that are involved in cartridges mandates either extremely precise manufacturing or careful selection, grading and evaluation of a hand-assembled final product. With such a large range of products opportunities for standardization allows for easier upgrading.