Empire 4000D (mid-1970s)
Documentation on the Empire 4000D is thin, and nearly all of it comes from Empire's own magazine advertising in the mid-1970s. The ads - sometimes under the name 4000D/III - billed the 4000D as a four-channel/super-stereo phono cartridge aimed squarely at the CD-4 quadraphonic format.
Empire's ad campaign in Audio (April 1975, p.57) made big claims: tracking force as low as 1/4 gram, clean tracking of 25 cm/sec grooves at under a gram, and frequency response from 5 Hz to 50 kHz within 3 dB. Those numbers were tailored to CD-4's demanding wideband carrier. The same ads quoted Len Feldman's lab report crediting the 4000D with 35 dB of channel separation at 1 kHz, a figure the copy called remarkable for any cartridge. They also quoted an evaluation praising its CD-4, matrixed, and stereo playback with any demodulator or turntable used, with unusually precise channel balance. High-Fidelity (October 1975, p.103) carried a version of the same ad, again quoting the 35 dB separation figure.
Beyond the advertising record, almost nothing is documented. No confirmed production years, original price, or independent full test report of the 4000D has surfaced in the material available.
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