Audio-Technica AT-32
A $300 moving-coil that came in a gold-hinged box and asked its owner to trust a beryllium cantilever.
Overview
The AT-32 is a stereo moving-coil phono cartridge. Audio-Technica built it around an unusual layout: two coils arranged in an inverted V above a beryllium cantilever. The contemporary press says the inverted V was done to keep moving mass low. An improved radial damping ring holds the generator steady.
Rated frequency response runs from 10 Hz to 24 kHz. Channel balance is held to 0.75 dB. Recommended tracking force is 1 to 2 grams. The cartridge weighs 6.8 grams, light enough for most arms of the period without a lot of counterweight fuss. At $300 it was not an impulse buy, and the packaging showed it: a gold-finished, hinged plastic case holding the mounting hardware and a screwdriver.
Audio (December 1981, p.46) profiled the AT-32 in its Equipment Profile pages, and the review's practical complaints are worth repeating because they are the kind of thing a spec sheet never tells you. The reviewer wished the front of the cartridge carried a vertical indexing line — useful both for cueing and for setting azimuth correctly — and noted that the body would benefit from such a mark. That is a small thing until you are trying to align a stylus by eye in dim light, at which point it becomes the most important thing in the room.
The same review opened by pushing back against the era's moving-coil mystique. It observed that a cult had grown up around the breed, assigning everything else a lowly status. The AT-32 was presented within that context, not as a miracle worker but as a thoughtfully engineered entry from a highly respected maker in a crowded field.
Audio-Technica also offered the AT-650, a universal stereo moving-coil matching transformer with selectable input impedance of 3, 20, and 40 ohms plus a pass setting. It was the companion piece for anyone running the AT-32 into a moving-magnet phono stage. Accessories like it have largely vanished from modern catalogs.
A cartridge of this vintage should be assumed to need inspection before it goes anywhere near a record. Styli and suspensions do not improve with four decades of sitting. The gold box, the hardware, and the screwdriver are period-correct and worth keeping together with the cartridge.
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