EMT was founded in 1940 by Wilhelm Franz in Berlin as Elektromesstechnik — a maker of measurement equipment for broadcast technology. From Lahr, in the Black Forest, its professional turntables became the machines radio ran on, and in 1965 the company launched the TSD 15 "Tondose," a moving-coil cartridge produced in the tens of thousands and worked hard in broadcast studios all over the world. When a record was played on air in the second half of the twentieth century, there was a fair chance EMT equipment was playing it.
The company that carries the name today spans both sides of the Rhine. Since 2014, every EMT cartridge has been designed and hand-built in Switzerland, where a small team of watchmakers and assembly specialists winds coils, sets diamonds, and measures and documents each cartridge individually — the same house that builds Thales tonearms. The broadcast discipline never left: these are working instruments first, and the musicality follows from that.
The current range is complete in a way few analogue brands can claim. The 928 II turntable runs on battery power, taking the mains out of the signal path entirely. The 909 and 912 tonearms — each over 150 machined parts — carry either a fixed hi-fi headshell or the classic EMT connector for the Tondose, which is milled today from a solid block of magnesium and offered in stereo, true-mono, and shellac versions. The JSD cartridges bring the EMT generator to conventional tonearms, and the EMT 128 tube phono stage and Swiss-wound STX 5/10 step-up transformer finish the chain. If you own our Thorens TD 124 DD Exclusive — its Tondose 124 cartridge is EMT's work — you have already heard where this catalog leads.
