Browsing around AliExpress the other month (must have been bored!) I came across a number of moving coil cartridges listed. Chinese hi-fi has came on a lot in recent years, especially in electronics, and many established European and other brands have manufacturing done in China. But cartridges? They don't suit mass production techniques so cost savings are possibly (probably) done by using cheaper materials.
Looking around hi-fi forums, comments vary with some saying that the quality of styli and cantilevers leave a lot to be desired. Well, there was one way to find out. £200 (including UK customs duty) and some weeks later the Zhige ZG-K101 arrived. Plainly packed in a nice wooden box, with the lid held on by magnetic studs, it looks the part - and I took a number of pictures which you can scroll down to see. Using a simple USB microscope (Chinese of course) there are some pictures of the stylus and cantilever in closeup, and it doesn't look as bad as I was expecting. The lack of a stylus guard wasn't really surprising. Fitting it into a headshell isn't a job for the faint hearted.
The cartridge specification is included below, and states that a 30 hour "run in" time is needed. To speed this process up I used Clearaudio's "Break in" test record. This has locked grooves of pink noise and I subjected the cartridge to over 40 hours of this torture. Not that it changed the sound very much at all if I'm honest.
The first record I chose to test the Zhige with was from old favourites of mine, the jazz fusion juggernaut that is Spyro Gyra. Here is side 1 of their 1986 album Breakout.
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