Mark II

About the Mark II

The Mitchell A Cotter Mark II is a stereo moving coil pickup transformer designed to fully realize the potential excellence of moving coil cartridges. It is renowned for its transparency to the audio signal and its ability to reject noise, effectively disappearing in the signal path to deliver pure sound. The Mark II features improvements in physical construction over the original MK-1, including better plugs and build quality. It comes in several types to match different cartridge impedances: Type P (6-30 ohms, low impedance), Type PP (20-30 ohms, EMT pickups), Type S (20-100 ohms, high impedance), and Type L (1-6 ohms, super low impedance). The transformer uses Cotter's original silver wire triaxial cable for excellent lossless transmission and noise rejection. It has been highly praised for approaching the thresholds of textbook perfection in sound quality, with no active device known to be as quiet or as close to a straight wire in sonic character. The Mark II was released around 1979-1980 and is considered a classic in high-end phono step-up transformers.