Conditioning dictates that if someone claims to have made something from scratch, odds are it's a speaker. With all due respect to speaker builders of repute, there's nothing easier than shoving drivers in a box and calling one's self 'a manufacturer.' But I genuinely cannot remember the last time I was told by someone that he had made an all-new phono cartridge. And from South Africa, to boot.

Let's qualify this: André Hanekom, in addition to being a music lover and audiophile, has a background that lends itself to fashioning his own cartridge. For many years the South African distributor of a handful of watch brands, with mechanical skills of his own, André was not put off by micro-mechanics. And herein lies a tale, as much inspirational as cautionary, for all you would-be Joe Grados.

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André describes the origins of the Blue Angel Mantis MC with an experience familiar to many entrepreneurs; it's not unlike Ferrucio Lamborghini deciding to make his own car when faced with an unreliable Ferrari. 'Exactly four years ago, I bought a Supex SD900 Super II, and found that it was damaged upon arriving at home. Three months later, I managed to repair it myself, and this caused what may be termed an obsession to make my own moving-coil.

'To try and copy a Supex or a Koetsu cartridge would be easy, but this would be immoral and a severe insult to the late Sugano-san. So, every single part of this product has been made by me in my workshop at home, except for the packaging, which comes from my friend, Rodney Gold, and the stylus/cantilever assemblies, which I import from Fritz Gyger in Switzerland.

'But before I could even think of making a cartridge, I had to acquire a metal-turning lathe and a milling machine, and teach myself how to use them. After this came the purchase of literally hundreds of other specialised tools.' André explained that many tools required for cartridge making cannot be bought 'off the shelf,' so he had to make them himself, as he went along - talk about a sharp learning curve. But, he admitted, 'I became fed-up with trying to get an outside firm to anodise things for me and here started another "adventure". A special anodising installation for small components had to be built and I had to become proficient enough to do this job myself, as well.'

This preamble goes some way toward explaining why the Blue Angel Mantis will always be a rare beast: André insists on making each one and doesn't anticipate being able to make more than five per week - probably less. 'It is certain that the manufacture of ultra-fine components is very time-consuming, so recently I had talks with an outside firm with CNC and mould-making facilities. The problem, however, is that most local firms with specialised facilities instantly lose interest when they see the size of a cartridge body and learn the limited production numbers.

'Somehow, I will probably come to some arrangement with a local firm as, basically, I would prefer only to wind the armatures, assemble the components and be involved with measurements.' For the time being, though, every Blue Angel MC is hand-made by the designer.

THE TECHNOLOGY
André admits that, 'There is nothing radically new in this design.' Instead, he looked toward the finer points of cartridge design. He uses a 'special grade of aluminium' for the bodies, which are milled in two parts, due to the difficulty of fine-finishing a single piece chassis. He considered casting the body as one piece, but was informed by firms with anodising expertise that aluminium castings cannot be anodised.

He designed the body to be as light and rigid as possible, with straight sides and a narrow 'nose' to make set-up as easy as possible. I was reminded of Ortofon's Concorde, and its sheer simplicity for lining up the body within the gridlines of a set-up device. The Mantis also features a large mounting plate to ensure solid coupling to the headshell, with standard half-inch spacing to accept special stainless-steel Allen screws. It was pointed out that these small screws 'could not be bought ready to use,' so almost all of them are modified by to André 'to fit the purpose.'

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