Ortofon Synergy G SPU Phono Pickup and ST-80 SE Transformer

REVIEW
by Paul Seydor
Mar 22, 2024

In Issue 337, I reviewed the new Thorens TD 124 DD direct-drive turntable, a revised, re-engineered, and updated version of the classic idler-driven TD 124, one of the most highly regarded tables in the history of audio. As part of the product’s launch, Thorens CEO Gunter Kürten wanted to offer consumers the option of an all-in-one, plug-n-play combination with table, tonearm, and phono pickup that would answer the not always congruent demands for a record-playing ensemble that is at once true vintage and true high end. Kürten arranged with Ortofon to market that company’s Synergy G pickup, part of its classic SPU line (the acronym stands for Stereo Pick Up), under the Thorens brand as the SPU TD 124 Phono Pickup. It can be purchased with the 124 DD (the price of the pickup added to the turntable) or separately. Focal-Naim, Thorens’s North American importer, had no 124 SPUs available for me, but Ortofon of America generously sent a sample of the Synergy G, which I intended to evaluate in a sidebar to the TD 124 review. Then, just as I was about to send the Thorens 124 DD review off, Kürten sent me an SPU TD 124. As it was too late to evaluate it for inclusion in that review, our editor Robert Harley and I decided to hold off any comments on the Synergy G until I had time to compare it to the Thorens equivalent.

Although the basic SPU design is over 60 years old, Ortofon keeps it current in several different versions, all carrying the SPU moniker, because it remains extremely popular with that segment of the market that continues to love and use vintage Thorens, Garrard, and EMT turntables, SME’s classic 3009 or 3012 arms, tube gear by the likes of McIntosh and Quad, and speakers such as Quad ESLs, horns from Altec, JBL, and Klipsch, LS3/5as, and several other BBC-derived models from the likes of Spendor, Harbeth, Stirling Broadcast, and Graham Audio. I am familiar with much of this gear, but despite having reviewed several Ortofons for TAS over the past 20 years, I’d never crossed paths with any of its SPU models.

The Synergy G was an apposite choice. Like the 124 DD itself, it retains the vintage look, basic sound, and some of the technology of the original while being judiciously brought up to date in key areas. A nude elliptical stylus replaces the original conical stylus; reduced in mass, it’s claimed to track better than many SPU models, at a recommended tracking force of 3.5 grams, though the specified range is 3-4 grams. These figures are scarily high for those used to modern tracking weights below, often well below, 3 grams, but I have a close friend, an audio industry professional, who during the last 60 years and longer has built a library of more than seven thousand extremely well-preserved LPs, which he’s been playing mostly with properly mounted vintage SPUs and Denons tracking at those forces (occasionally higher). I’ve been a guest at his place for several serious listening sessions where I’ve heard absolutely no audible evidence of increased wear (this man takes scrupulous care of his records and is exacting when it comes to pickup installation and setup). Ortofon also revised the generator system to raise the output to 0.5mV, “relaxing,” as, the company’s literature puts it, “the requirement for high gain transformer or active preamplification systems.” (More on this later.)

Like all SPU models, the G is supplied already integrated into the classic Ortofon headshell with universal SME connector (this connector was, in fact, invented by Ortofon, but early adopters attributed it to SME—a mistake that has long since hardened into “fact”). Pickup and headshell combined weigh in at a hefty 28 grams. Thorens supplies two counterweights with the TD 124 DD’s arm, the heavier one specifically for balancing Ortofon SPUs. Together with a compliance of 8µm/mN, this mandates arms of at least medium and higher mass and removable universal headshells. Most of the evaluations were carried out with the Thorens table and arm, but I also pressed into service Luxman’s PD-151 with its integrated Jelco arm and SME’s new M2-12R (an updated version of its classic 3012 arm, review forthcoming); my friend referenced earlier uses a Schick 12-inch arm.

Before getting to the sound, some things you need to know if you’re tempted by Ortofon SPUs. First, to my knowledge, these pickups are not available apart from the headshell into which they are integrated, and the pickup itself is not user removable from the headshell. Second, needless to say (but I’m saying it anyhow), this makes the G unusable with fixed-headshell arms—the business end of the arm must terminate in the universal SME-style headshell. Third, you need to make sure the counterweight of your arm is heavy enough to balance the G so that you can achieve a sufficient tracking weight of at least 4 grams. This was possible with the Luxman’s Jelco but only with the counterweight positioned nearly out to the end of the shaft (SME arms supply an auxiliary counterweight specifically for SPUs). Fourth, as noted, the SPUs are not only fixed in their headshells, but they also cannot be adjusted within the headshell for overhang or offset. Unless you’re using an SME or an arm with an SME-style sliding base (e.g., GrooveMaster), you’re stuck with whatever overhang and offset the length of your arm as installed allows. Thorens designed the arm on the 124 DD for correct overhang and offset of SPUs and supplies a slotted headshell for other pickups. Owing to its adjustable base, the SME easily accommodated the SPU. As for the Luxman Jelco, despite the adjustment restrictions, I got really excellent performance from the Synergy G.

After I broke the G in for about 50 hours and began listening in earnest, it didn’t take long to hear why SPUs have developed such a fierce loyalty that remains intact and growing over six decades since the first one was introduced and why the company keeps developing new variants while retaining the original. (Google “sounds and flavors of Ortofon SPU” for an interesting survey, with thumbnail descriptions of the sound of several past and current SPUs.) My goodness, this is one seductive pickup, with rich, saturated colors, variegated textures, and life and liveliness to burn. It’s got a prodigious bottom end of considerable power, definition, and articulation, which I noticed right away from Ray Brown’s bass on Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West (Analogue Productions remastering) or the powerful double basses which open Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 on Stokowski’s sensational Rhapsodies album (Analogue Productions 33-rpm remastering). The whole lower midrange up to the bottom of the presence region is luxuriously warm and musical, while voices and instruments have almost preternatural body and dimensionality. Indeed, several persons in my listening group remarked how grounded the presentation of this pickup is. Of course, putting it that way is not to suggest any deficiency in detail retrieval or resolution. It retrieved everything from the sources I typically use to evaluate such things, but without spotlighting or glare, instead judiciously, evenhandedly.

Vocal recordings of popular music, jazz, and folk from the fifties and sixties are made for this pickup. As I write this, I am listening to Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers (vintage Capitol) and can barely concentrate on the task at hand, so captivating is the presentation. Modern recordings are equally rewarding, whether it’s the big band of Lyn Stanley’s Novel Noel (A.T. Music), the varied ensemble of Jacintha’s Fire and Rain (Groove Note), or the intimacy of the new one-step of Patricia Barber’s Nightclub (Impex). Each of these boasts different but demonstration-calibre sonics of extraordinary presence, transparency, and dynamic range. It took no time at all to realize how easy it would be to become addicted to sound like this, nor have I grown tired of it over time, as can sometimes happen with “flavored” components that are immediately appealing.

With a Gundry-like dip throughout the presence region, I freely grant it’s neither flat nor neutral. Like most moving coils from the early days—to my ears, classic Denons are a rare exception—it’s a little pushed back in the presence region, which tends to accentuate depth in a way that can be rather appealing, e.g., the offstage brass at the opening of Mahler’s First Symphony in the powerful new vinyl-only remastering of Bernstein’s DG recording (my TAS review will have been published by now). Beyond the presence region as we get into the highs, the response comes back up and then some, so it’s a little bright, an effect I found mostly unobjectionable except on recordings where orchestral strings and trumpets may already be too bright if too closely miked or if the mikes themselves (or the EQ) are bright. The Bernstein Mahler furnishes another example: with the Synergy G I much enjoyed the more distantly miked Concertgebouw recordings; when the venue switched to the New York Philharmonic and Avery Fisher Hall (since 2014 David Geffen Hall), the acoustics drier and the miking closer, I preferred my Denon 103 or Shure V15xMr owing to the more judicious balance between the presence region and the top end.

That said, when it comes to music with lots of high percussion, like jazz, I found all that life and vitality, that definition and clarity which derive from the high-frequency extension, plus the way it allows these instruments to bite the ear gently, really scintillating, not to say musically valid. The Synergy G did a sensational job on the sonically sensational new West Side Story soundtrack (see TAS 327), notably the searingly hot Prologue with all its finger snaps, snares, drums, maracas, and other assorted percussion, not to mention those distant whistles. Likewise, the amount of air and atmosphere it reproduces reaps truly wonderful rewards in recordings that capture the sounds of spaces with richly reverberant acoustics, like churches, cathedrals, and other large venues. Just listen to any of the beautifully recorded Joel Cohen Christmas records on Nonesuch (Sing We Noel especially), which are bathed in church-like ambience. Meanwhile, Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, which I haven’t pulled out in years, was a real hoot when the whole audience rocks along in “Matilda.”

The Synergy also displayed outstanding drive, timing, togetherness, and, once again, that elusive ability to make the music come alive with the life, vitality, and dimensionality of the real thing. At 3.5 grams, tracking is for the most part excellent, though with a few of my most difficult records—densely scored orchestral passages, intensely modulated pressings (the police whistle that halts the Prologue in that West Side Story), hot sibilants—you do realize that current Ortofon non-SPU and other mc’s have advanced a considerable distance over their brethren of yore. (In fairness I should add that many contemporary pickups also come a cropper with some of these recordings.)

Ortofon obligingly sent along its top-of-the-line ST-80 SE step-up transformer, which proved a superb match. Classic SPUs are a bit notorious for their very low signal output, but between the Synergy’s 0.5mV output, higher than other SPUs, and the windings on the transformer, it was possible to get a lot of loudness with what I’d consider (subjectively speaking) state-of-the-art signal-to-noise ratio and background blackness. Taking Ortofon’s claims at their word, one of the reasons Thorens chose the Synergy for the 124 DD was the claim it could bypass step-up devices. Hmmm—well…sure, if you have a quiet enough phonostage, which I do in my McIntosh C53, the Musical Surroundings Phenomena 3, and the visiting NAD 399, with any one of which I could certainly get levels fearsomely loud enough with little or no intrusive noise. But—I’d have to lie to say I liked what I heard. Running mc’s wide-open leaves the very high-frequency resonances endemic to them all completely undamped. In the case of the Synergy G, all the warmth, richness, solidity, and body I heard through the transformer—or through the C53 properly loaded—was gone or seriously diminished: in other words, virtually everything I really like about the pickup, replaced by a thin, edgy, bright, vaguely “ringing” presentation that was not only not pleasant but with many sources positively irritating. Any potential improvement in transparency, tiny at best, from eliminating the step-up devices was nowhere near worth the trade-off in warmth and musicality, nor was the slight increase in dynamic range, not least because a correctly terminated Synergy G needs no gilding in these areas.

If the ST-80 SE at $2199 stretches your budget too much, rest assured that something as modest as my trusty, and quite excellent, Quicksilver transformer ($600) will let you hear just how beautifully this SPU can sing. There is also Ortofon’s entry-level ST-7 ($679), which I’ve not heard but I’ll wager is pretty good (it garners excellent user consumer reviews online). All the same, the 80 SE is a mighty persuasive piece of kit: dual-mono, magnetically shielded, solid, substantial, beautifully made, sonically transparent, and aesthetically striking (it’s about the coolest looking step-up device I’ve ever seen). The chassis also has some weight to it, so that stiff and/or heavy interconnects tend not to push or pull it around.

I ran the Synergy G into the mc stage of my McIntosh C53 preamplifier and also the aforementioned Phenomena 3, both with appropriate loading and excellent results. But I must grant the argument of those vintage mavens who insist moving coils, particularly vintage ones, are just plain better with transformers. There is a musicality, an organicism, a smoothness, and a certain unfettered, wholly natural dynamism that no active setup can quite match—at least with this pickup and my favorite Denons.

If you already have a modern phono pickup or two you like but want a change of pace or an alternative a la vintage, the Synergy G might just be the push you’re looking for. As high-end mc’s go in this day and age, its price is far from outlandish, and if it’s hardly the last word in sonic neutrality and flat frequency response, so what? Many, if not most phono pickups are not echt neutral. And keep in mind that at the end of the day, when all the testing and evaluating are over, much of the time even we reviewers have been known to elect beauty over truth in our pursuit of something we just love listening to, that pleases, engages our senses, and draws us into the music, provided of course the deviations from neutrality are not gross or noxious.

In those terms, the Synergy G certainly merits serious attention not in spite of but because of its seductively romantic, splendidly musical, and generously warm, colorful, and inviting sonic personality. During the review period, there were many times at the end of a listening session or a stressful day when I switched back to it after something else just because its particular style of beautiful musicmaking was precisely the tonic I needed.

As regards pricing, Focal-Naim’s retail for the SPU TD 124 is $429 more than the otherwise identical Ortofon version. As the North American distributor for Thorens, they are a middle person, which in effect makes them a middle person once removed when it comes to the SPU TD 124 versus the Synergy G. As such, they can’t be expected to handle for free acquisition, import, distribution, delivery, and all the other effort and expenses involved in marketing audio products. Perhaps Thorens and Focal-Naim between them can sharpen their pencils enough to give North American consumers a special package-price when the pickup and table/arm are purchased together. Otherwise, if you’re interested in that combination—and as I hope I’ve conveyed, it’s a really wonderfully attractive synergy—buy the pickup directly from Ortofon.

Do I need to point out that the Synergy G and the 124 SPU are sonically identical? They are, indistinguishably so.

Specs & Pricing

Ortofon Synergy G SPU Phono Pickup
Output: 0.5mV
Frequency response: 20Hz–20kHz ±2dB
Stylus: Nude elliptical
Tracking force: 3.5g (recommended)
Internal impedance: 2 ohms
Recommended load impedance: 10–50 ohms
Price: $2429

ST-80 SE Transformer
Recommended cartridge impedance: <10
Gain: 27dB at 1kHz
Frequency response: 10Hz–100kHz +0.5dB/-2.5dB
Dimensions: 6″ x 3.93″ x 3.74″
Weight: 3 lbs.
Price: $2199