Pickering XV-15/1200E
A cartridge that asked you to track at three-quarters of a gram and promised the world in return.
Overview
Pickering's own advertising set the tone early. The 1200E was "the furthest advance achievable today - and perhaps in the foreseeable future - in stereo cartridge design and performance." That is the kind of line a marketing department writes once it has convinced itself. Pickering ran it across the audio press for years. HiFi-Stereo (September 1973, p.97) carried the same "significant advance in the state-of-the-art" banner, and High Fidelity (October 1973, p.6) ran it too. Take the hyperbole with some skepticism. The specification sheet underneath it is interesting, though, and it explains why the 1200E sat at the top of the XV-15 series.
The headline number is the tracking force: three-quarters of a gram, with a tolerance of +1/2 gram and −1/4 gram. That is a light-tracking design, and Pickering built the whole pitch around it — the company's copy repeatedly emphasized the cartridge's "exceptional ability to pick up all the material recorded at the lightest possible tracking forces." Light tracking was the audiophile religion of the period, and the 1200E was built to preach it. The caveat, which Pickering's own literature does not dwell on, is that a stylus riding this lightly demands a well-behaved tonearm and clean records; owners who ran it in lesser arms or on worn vinyl would have found the margin for error uncomfortably thin.
The frequency response is quoted as 10 Hz to 30 kHz, which is wide for the era. It reflects the stated purpose: the 1200E was pitched for "stereo and four-channel derived compatible systems," meaning it was expected to cope with the matrix-derived quadraphonic formats then competing for the market. Channel separation is given as 35 dB nominal, and nominal output as 4.4 mV. The stylus is an elliptical diamond with tip dimensions of 0.0002" × 0.0007". Pickering attached its "DCF" (Dynamic Coupling Factor) rating of 1200 to the model, which is the number the cartridge is named for, and claimed it delivered "100% Music Power." Those are house terms, not standardized measurements. Read them as marketing shorthand rather than lab figures.
Despite the name, the 1200E is not a discrete four-channel cartridge. Pickering was explicit about the distinction. The matrix-compatible 1200E handled stereo and matrix-derived quad, while discrete CD-4 playback required a completely different design: the UV-15 series, with its Quadrahedral stylus and far wider response. Discrete discs carried FM-modulated signals up at 30 kHz that the 1200E was never engineered to trace. Buyers who assumed the top-of-line XV-15 could do everything were steered, in the same advertisements, toward the UV-15.
The original price was $79.95 audiophile net. That was a serious sum for a phono cartridge in the early 1970s, and Pickering justified it by aiming the product squarely at "the sophisticate" with "components of such superlative quality that the superiority of the XV-15/1200E is a requirement." The surviving documentation is almost entirely Pickering's own advertising and spec copy. The company's claim that the 1200E was "superior in the flatness of its frequency response and channel separation in comparison to competitive cartridges" appears in its literature without an independent measurement to back it.
The published figures do not agree across sources. Pickering's own advertising consistently lists 4.4 mV nominal output and a 3/4-gram tracking force. A later UK catalog entry gives the 1200E's tracking force as 0.5 to 1.25 g and its output as 4.4 mV with a weight of 6.3 g, which sits awkwardly beside the American literature. The safest reading is that the 3/4-gram recommendation is Pickering's nominal figure with its stated tolerances, and that the range in the UK listing reflects a broader usable window. Verify against the stylus actually fitted, since the 1200E's stylus assembly is the part that defines its tracking behavior.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.