Lewis CaliburnTonar is celebrating its 70th anniversary. Over the past decades, the brand, who manufacturers everything from replacement phono styli, to cartridges, cleaning accessories or parts, has aimed to provide essential tools to allow music-lovers to fully enjoy their record collections.
World’s specialist in phonograph styli and cartridges
Tonar was founded in 1954 by Wilf Libgott, a Canadian pilot for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Between the long-distance flights to the Americas and Japan, he started the company in his spare time. Originally Tonar was an O.E.M supplier, specialising in the field of synthetic sapphire products, such as bearings for watches, gas meters and other instruments.
These parts were sold to industrial users. Soon a phonograph cartridge manufacturer contacted Tonar to purchase sapphire tips for their phonograph needles. This was the first step into what is currently the company’s core business – replacement styli and cartridges for record players.
Tonar now boasts a huge collection of phonograph replacement needles, original needles, phonograph cartridges and accessories for vinyl. The current line consists of more than 3,000 replacement needles and original needles, as well as more than 1500 different types of phonograph cartridges.
Today, Tonar claims to be the world’s leading and most specialised supplier of phono styli and cartridges. The Dutch-based company offers special shape cartridges for old record players where only one cartridge model will fit, as well as standard ½ inch mount cartridges, T4P-plug-in cartridges, crystal, ceramic, moving magnet, induced magnet, moving iron and moving coil type cartridges.
The brand’s cartridges and styli are not only used in hi-fi record players but also in 78 RPM Pathe-phone’s, vintage record players and jukeboxes.
Vinyl cleaning and sound improvement
Aside from replacement styli and cartridges, Tonar offers a full line of accessories for vinyl cleaning and sound improvement. The Tonar Classic Brush and the carbon fiber Nostatic brush are found near many turntables for a quick swipe of the record to remove the dust and the static charge.
Recently, Tonar has developed the Wash & Dry vinyl washing machine, an affordable device to clean a record collection with a silent yet powerful vacuum motor.
Aside from that, Tonar offers various turntable mats, record weights and lightweight clamps to reduce unwanted vibrations and to improve the sound quality during playback.
In addition, Tonar is a distributor of many leading audio brands. This includes GRADO Phono Cartridges from Brooklyn New York, JICO styli and cartridges from Japan, KNOSTI vinyl washing machines from Germany and the StylusTimer and the Q-UP automatic tonearm lifter.