DIY MC Cartridge

[mlise]

Has anyone thought about building a MC cartridge from scratch? Has anyone else tried?

I'm looking at something like
ON Semiconductor EMI9404: 4CH EMI LC Filter with ESD Protection
for coils.

It's actually copper coils integrated onto an IC with zener diodes. These are in plastic packages, but there are chip scale coils too which are much smaller. The roll off of the filters is in the megahertz, so that's probably not going to be a problem. They're great at filtering out GSM cell phone noise. There's a surplus place here with Litz wire and the individual strands of enameled wire must be about AWG 63 which is small enough to solder to the IC's.

for a cantilever
Amazon.com: Translucent Amber Miniature Polyimide Tubing, 44 AWG, 0.0020" ID, 0.0030" OD, 0.0005" Wall, 30" Length: Industrial & Scientific
which might actually be too thin. The filter IC's would be glued edge on to the cantilever. Since the chips are half a mm tall, that would be a good diameter for the cantilever.

A couple of these
SuperMagnetMan Ring Magnet
would make a field for the coils to live in.

I have no idea where to get a diamond tip. There's a guy in New York that re-tips cartridges for $250, but that's a pretty steep experiment. A cheap-0 cartridge or needle from Radio Shack might be a good donor to start with.