EMT
EMT — Elektro-Mess-Technik — was founded in 1940 in Berlin by Wilhelm Franz, an engineer building measurement equipment for broadcast studios. After the war, the company relocated to Lahr in the Black Forest, and by 1959 the EMT 927 and 930 professional turntables had become fixtures of broadcast facilities across Europe and the Americas. If a serious European radio station cut a record between 1955 and 1985, there is a very good chance an EMT machine played it back.
The cartridges came out of the same discipline. When broadcast engineers began asking EMT for a matched pickup rather than sourcing one from a third party, the company built its own generator. The result was the TSD 15 — a moving-coil cartridge, released in 1965, that went on to be produced in the tens of thousands and installed in broadcast studios worldwide. Every EMT hi-fi cartridge on this page traces its lineage to that generator. The Tondose family — the TSD, TMD, and TND cartridges — carries the broadcast form factor and the direct broadcast connection standard forward. The HSD and HMD are the hi-fi renderings of the same principle in a body sized for a hi-fi tonearm.
In 1965 EMT could not have foreseen how the audio industry would change around it. Ownership passed through several hands over the decades — a Belgian broadcast group, then private ownership under Walter Derrer, and after his death in 2007 to Jules Limon, who moved the company under the umbrella of EMT International in Switzerland. In 2014, cartridge production formally transferred to HiFiction AG — the Swiss engineering house led by Micha Huber, better known to analog listeners as the designer behind the Thales tonearms and turntables. Since 2014, every EMT cartridge has been designed and built by hand in Winterthur.
The 2006 JSD series was the first cartridge line built specifically for the modern high-end home system rather than the broadcast console — the same generator discipline in a body tuned for the reference room. The 2021 Novel Technology introduced a multi-layer core transducer with a titanium and sapphire cantilever assembly. The 2022 return of the 928 turntable and the 909 and 912 tonearms, in updated form, brought the full EMT front end back into current production for the first time in decades.
What Alma carries is the complete lineup. The 928 II battery-powered turntable and the 909 and 912 tonearms — the reference-tier records-first analog front end. The 128 Micro Tube Phonostage and the step-up transformer — the electronics for a proper moving-coil system. The JSD, HSD, and HMD hi-fi cartridges. And the Tondose broadcast cartridges — TSD, TMD, TND — for the listener who wants the same generator the studios used, rebuilt today in Switzerland.
EMT TND 065 Cartridge
EMTThe TND 065 is the Tondose broadcast cartridge for shellac 78-rpm records — a true mono generator with a 65-micron spherical stylus, sized for the ...
View full detailsEMT TMD 025 Cartridge
EMTThe TMD 025 is a true mono Tondose broadcast cartridge with a 25-micron spherical stylus — the profile sized for the earlier mono LP archive, where...
View full detailsEMT TMD 015 Cartridge
EMTThe TMD 015 is a true mono Tondose broadcast cartridge for late and current-generation mono LPs — the mono records cut on stereo-era lathes, with a...
View full detailsEMT TSD SPH Cartridge
EMTThe TSD SPH is the Tondose stereo cartridge with a 15-micron spherical diamond — the profile that was general practice in stereo cartridge design b...
View full detailsEMT TSD MRB Cartridge
EMTThe TSD MRB is the traditional EMT stereo Tondose generator with the modern MR HP diamond and a boron cantilever — the broadcast body, brought to t...
View full detailsEMT TSD Novel Cartridge
EMTThe TSD Novel is the Tondose reworked with EMT's Novel Technology — the multi-layer core transducer and the titanium/sapphire cantilever assembly, ...
View full detailsEMT TSD SFL Cartridge
EMTThe TSD SFL is the traditional EMT stereo Tondose generator with a Super-Fine-Line diamond and an aluminium cantilever — the closest current produc...
View full detailsEMT HMD 025 Cartridge
EMTThe HMD 025 is a hi-fi mono cartridge — a true mono generator, not a stereo cartridge summed to mono at the phono stage — built around the professi...
View full detailsEMT HSD 006 Cartridge
EMTThe HSD 006 is a hi-fi stereo cartridge built around EMT's traditional stereo moving-coil generator — the transducer that established itself over d...
View full detailsEMT JSD 6 Cartridge
EMTThe JSD 6 is the entry to EMT's high-end aluminium-body cartridge line — the same body and boron-cantilever geometry as the JSD 5, with a Super-Fin...
View full detailsEMT JSD 5 Cartridge
EMTThe JSD 5 is EMT's high-end stereo cartridge in its most compact form — an aluminium-body generator built around a multi-radius, high-polish diamon...
View full detailsEMT JSD VM Cartridge
EMTThe JSD VM is a reference stereo cartridge with a feature no other cartridge in current production offers: a variable-mass body. The listener can t...
View full detailsEMT JSD Pure Black Cartridge
EMTThe JSD Pure Black is a reference stereo cartridge with a sandwich body — an aluminium and bronze constrained-layer construction that places a high...
View full detailsEMT JSD Novel Titan Cartridge
EMTThe JSD Novel Titan is the silver-coil expression of EMT's Novel Technology — the same multi-layer core transducer as the Novel Gold, wound with pu...
View full detailsEMT JSD Novel Gold Cartridge
EMTThe JSD Novel Gold is the current top of the EMT hi-fi cartridge program — the reference expression of EMT's multi-layer transducer technology in a...
View full detailsEMT SRX 5/10 Step-Up Transformer
EMTThe EMT 5/10 is a passive step-up transformer built for the low-output moving-coil cartridge — including, and especially, the EMT cartridges themse...
View full detailsEMT 128 Micro Tube Phonostage
EMTThe EMT 128 is a phono stage built to a set of demands EMT has been answering, in one form or another, since the 1950s: quiet, linear, tolerant of ...
View full detailsEMT X-Headshell
EMTThe EMT X-Headshell is the standard headshell for the X-mount versions of the EMT 909 and 912 professional tonearms — the mount configuration that ...
View full detailsEMT 909 Tonearm
EMTThe EMT 909 is the 9-inch professional tonearm — the shorter sibling of the 912, designed for a removable Tondose broadcast cartridge and configura...
View full detailsEMT 912 Tonearm
EMTThe EMT 912 is the 12-inch professional tonearm — built for the EMT Tondose broadcast cartridges, and optionally configured for the two other heads...
View full detailsEMT 928/912 Adapter
EMTThe EMT 928 II is prepared, out of the box, for a 9-inch EMT tonearm. The 928/912 Adapter extends that preparation to the 12-inch arm — the EMT 912...
View full detailsEMT 909-HI Tonearm
EMTThe EMT 909-HI is the 9-inch tonearm at the centre of the EMT hi-fi program — the arm the 928 II is prepared for out of the box, and the arm most l...
View full detailsEMT 912-HI Tonearm
EMTThe EMT 912-HI is a 12-inch tonearm designed to carry a hi-fi cartridge — one built for a fixed half-inch mount rather than the removable broadcast...
View full detailsEMT 928 II Battery Powered Turntable
EMTThe EMT 928 II is the current expression of a turntable philosophy the company has held to since the 1950s. A record deck, to EMT, is a piece of pr...
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