Seeing sound. Why Wheel 3 sounds so much better.

A technical update this time. Buckle up!

Wheel 3 uses a true diamond stylus that physically tracks the record groove. Nothing captures the music in vinyl better than direct mechanical contact with the groove. 

Most cartridges convert stylus (needle) vibrations into an electrical signal using magnets and coils. The two main types are moving magnet and moving coil designs. Wheel 3 is different.

Moving Magnet
In a typical moving magnet cartridge, small magnets are mounted at the base of the cantilever—the tiny, rigid rod linking the stylus to the coils inside the cartridge. These magnets add mass and, due to inductive losses, resist fast movement. To compensate, the cantilever must be very stiff, which in turn reduces the cartridge’s ability to track high-frequency detail accurately.

Moving Coil
Moving coil cartridges address this by reversing the setup: the coils are mounted on the cantilever, and the magnets are fixed. This lighter design improves high-frequency response, but it produces a much smaller signal and is more expensive to make, since the coils must be very tiny and wired to a moving cantilever.

However, there’s another issue that magnetic cartridges can’t resolve: low frequencies. Magnetic pickups only detect changes in magnetic fields, and low-frequency sounds cause slower, smaller shifts over time, while high-frequency sounds fluctuate rapidly. To make matters worse, the RIAA equalization used during record cutting intentionally reduces bass to save space on the vinyl. As a result, the phono stage in your amplifier must boost the low end significantly to rebalance the sound. This reduces the resolution of low-frequency information, which is why vinyl often sounds a bit muddy in the low end.

Wheel 3’s optical system without enclosure. Stylus vibrations are optically converted into analog audio and a precise position signal. Its inverted design allows the sensor to be placed close to the diamond tip for exceptional resolution.

Wheel 3 Optical Analog
Wheels 3's optical stylus solves this by replacing the magnetic pickup with an optical one. Unlike magnetic pickups, which measure acceleration, an optical pickup measures position, allowing it to "see" sound all the way down to 0 Hz. We achieve this by shining light onto a small plate on the needle and measuring the shadow it casts. This makes the entire stylus construction much lighter, enabling it to track higher frequencies more accurately as well. 
The result? Wheel 3’s stylus blows away anything you've heard before!

Tonearm
This also offers major advantages for driving the linear tonearm in the Wheel 3. By directly tapping into the raw signal from the needle, we can precisely position the carriage so the stylus always maintains perfect groove contact, regardless of orientation! The stylus's signal behaves similarly to that of an analog joystick, allowing us to adjust the carriage in real time to maintain the ideal pressure and angle between the stylus and the groove.

Wheel 3 is our most stunning design to date. Stay tuned for more in the next update!

Peter, Greet and the Wheel team