ELAC STS-344-17 (c. 1968)
The Elac STS-344-17 was a stereo cartridge made in West Germany. Benjamin Electronic Sound Corp. of Farmingdale, New York, distributed it in the U.S. Almost everything that survives about it comes from two 1968 lab reviews. HiFi/Stereo Review (July 1968, p.58) ran it in a Julian D. Hirsch / Gladden B. Houck group test of eleven cartridges. The others included Elac's own STS 244-17 and STS 444-E, plus models from ADC, Empire, Goldring, Ortofon, Pickering, Shure, and Stanton. High Fidelity (November 1968, p.79) profiled it separately, listed it at $39.59, and published a frequency-response trace of both channels.
In that same group test, Hirsch and Houck noted that cartridge design at the time was shaped as much by patent considerations and manufacturing costs as by measured performance. They also found that most cartridges in the new group tracked high-velocity grooves substantially better than earlier models the lab had tested (July 1968, p.61).
Beyond those reviews, the record is thin. The surviving pages don't give the STS-344-17's tracking force, stylus type, or output voltage. Its production span is undocumented too - the 1968 reviews are the firmest dates on it.
- Stereo cartridge, West German manufacture; U.S. distribution by Benjamin Electronic Sound Corp.
- Price in November 1968: $39.59
- Bench-tested in HiFi/Stereo Review's eleven-cartridge roundup (July 1968)
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