ADC TRX-2

The ADC TRX-2 is a very obscure cartridge. It is a fixed-coil phono cartridge (moving-magnet type), made in Japan for BSR (USA), Ltd. It got a proper review in High Fidelity in December 1983 and shows up in one Audio cartridge roundup from the same year. Almost everything else about it survives only in forum posts and a single seller listing.

High Fidelity (December 1983, p.42) described the TRX.2 - that's how the name was styled at the time - as a fixed-coil cartridge with a multiradial (line-contact) diamond stylus. It was priced at about $250, with the RTRX-2 replacement stylus at $75 and a one-year limited warranty that excluded stylus wear. The reviewer found it got through the DSL torture-test record at its 1-gram minimum tracking force. Frequency response measured superbly flat through most of the range, with one exception: a sharp rise in the top octave, already +1.5 dB at 10 kHz and climbing steeply toward 20 kHz. It also appeared among the phono cartridges charted in Audio (October 1983, p.90).

The design lineage is the most interesting documented fact. Per a knowledgeable Audiokarma thread, Azden/Piezo had built ADC's PSX p-mounts and SX standard-mount cartridges. For the TRX-2, ADC reportedly wanted a deluxe version of Azden's crosstalk-cancelling "tripole" setup - the same design Azden had made available to the short-lived company Acutex in the late 1970s. An Audiogon seller adds that the stylus is a "Fine Line Vital II" and that the TRX-1 and TRX-2 presumably share the same body, differing in cantilever/stylus assembly.

Everything else is thin. A Wikimedia Commons photo shows a TRX-2 (alongside a TRX-1) mounted on a Micro Seiki DD-33 turntable. One Audio Asylum user, weighing a $250 Sound Smith rebuild, found the TRX-2 more "accurate" than an older ADC ZLM but admitted the ZLM had better bass and a more palpable sense of dynamics — and noted that