For those of you that don’t know, B&O turntables have always had their own proprietary cartridges with a fixed stylus. Stylus wears out, you replace the whole thing.

The MMC2 cartridge on my Beogram 8002, which I resurrected from scrap about two years ago along with the rest of the 8000 system, finally died, nothing but a faint distorted mess on one channel, and the other one dead. The suspension was already a bit iffy when I got it, but I figured I could still get some use out of it.

B&O have licensed one company to produce replacements, and they are not cheap. AU$1500 for the equivalent of the MMC2. Hard pass.

To my calibrated eyeball, it looked like an Ortofon OM cartridge body has a very similar height between the pins and the stylus tip as the B&O cartridges, and an identical rake angle with the cartridge base parallel to the record.

Turns out I was right. Ordered some 6mm square aluminium tube and built a custom replacement tonearm complete with a 3D printed socket I designed fitted on the end to hold the OM body.

I trimmed off the 1/2” mounting wing from the cartridge to keep the 80s aesthetic, statically balanced the arm so it tracks at 1.75 grams (which is about ideal for a short, light arm like this) and fitted it all up.

Pretty sure I’m now the owner of the only B&O turntable that doesn’t need an expensive cartridge replacement whenever the stylus wears out.

I mean, B&O are Danish, Ortofon are Danish, so good enough for me.

The best bit? This whole mod cost all of $20. I have plenty of OM bodies in stock, and a new Stylus 10, so all I needed to buy was the tube and some tonearm wire, and it’s completely reversible if I ever win the lottery.

Bang & Ortofon? Yes, really!