Vertere Dark Sabre

Details matter in audio design.

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Moving-magnet cartridge

Getting those details right makes the difference between good and great; and right now we can't think of a better example of this than Vertere's new Dark Sabre moving-magnet cartridge. We are big fans of the standard Sabre cartridge. We reviewed it back in 2022 and it proved that moving-magnet cartridges could compete with the very best moving-coil options at its premium price.

The Dark Sabre pushes that price boundary even harder.

Initially, we wondered whether Vertere had been blinded by ambition. After all, the two Sabre models share many basic ingredients including the generator, telescopic cantilever design and even body construction. But... details matter.

DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES

Those details start with the stylus tip, the bit that actually makes contact with the record groove. In the Dark Sabre this is a single-crystal micro-elliptical design that has been precisioncut to shape before being attached directly to the two-piece telescopic aluminium cantilever. In the standard Sabre, the elliptical diamond is bonded to a titanium shank before being punched through the cantilever. The Dark Sabre method is a more precise way of doing things and allows the tip to track the record groove more accurately.

This one change allows Vertere to tweak the cantilever angle and design slightly, and also fine-tune the angle of the generator. This slightly different generator position means that the rigid aluminium cartridge body can be machined into a subtly different shape, which in turn changes the distribution of its mass. All of these are small tweaks, but their cumulative effect is significant.