Pickering Model 260
Two cartridges bolted back-to-back in a turnover mount - the pickup that let a mono-era listener play both LP and 78 without lifting a screwdriver.
Overview
The Model 260 is really two cartridges in one housing. Pickering built it as a 240-series LP pickup and a 220-series 78 pickup mounted back-to-back in a turnover mechanism that shorts out whichever head is not in use. One mount in the arm, two styli, and a flip of the housing to switch between microgroove and shellac. Pickering's own advertising described the 220 and 240 as sold separately for standard arms or mounted back-to-back to make up "the famous Pickering 260 turnover pickup" - a line that ran in High Fidelity (April 1955, p.4) and again in Audio (May 1955, p.15). So the 260 is the factory-assembled version of two cartridges that already existed on their own.
Each head has a nickel tube suspended in the center of a coil and set in a magnetic field, with the stylus fixed at the lower end of the tube. Movement of the tube within the coil changes the flux and generates the signal. Pickering rated the individual cartridges at roughly 22 mV output at the standard velocity of 7 cm/sec, with response flat on a velocity basis from 20 to 20,000 cps. The 260 package was quoted at approximately 70 mV from the same 7 cm/sec velocity. The step-up transformer furnished with the pickup accounts for the difference, and it helps if you are driving a period preamp with modest gain.
The 260 weighs 18 grams complete. That is a lot of mass at the end of a tonearm by later standards, but unremarkable for a turnover mount of its day. It tracks at 4 to 8 grams stylus force. Pickering also built additional weighting into the pickup head so that needle force does not need to be reset when the heads are changed. That is handy, since the whole point of a turnover pickup is switching back and forth.
Mounting is a single hole, with electrical connections made through a small receptacle in the bottom of the mounting stud. Owners who wanted only one of the two pickups could buy either the 220 or the 240 separately and run it in a special clip or adapter rather than the turnover assembly. The cartridges came only with diamonds for LP use, while 78 buyers could choose diamond or sapphire.
The Model 260 is generally described as the current model in a line that stretches back to the first magnetic cartridge offered for replacement purposes. That Pickering introduced a great many listeners to high-quality reproduction for the first time and held its standing among discriminating listeners for years afterward. The 260 is where the replacement-cartridge idea met a library holding both LP and 78 records.
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