4-500 $ cartridge for Project Debut Carbon ?


I recently gifted a niece a Carbon Debut TT with mounted Ortofon Red in hopes of encouraging interest she has shown lately in Classical Music.
It sounds quite good esp. since she's running it through an old Yamaha A-1000 amp with an excellent phono stage(2 actually).Suppose the Caras phono IC i threw in helped as well.
I put on the old Fritz Reiner Chicago "Scheherazade",
which as many of you know, has a huge dynamic range, I was quite surprised the Project took it all in stride with just a slight hardening of strings on those tremendous crecendos.
As she has 94db eff speakers and the A-1000 is powerful I don't think it was clipping. I'm thinking perhaps a better cartridge might do the trick ? Nagoka MP 300 is first thing that comes to mind,but my mind is old and needs help.
schubert

Showing 6 responses by schubert

An idea, the amp has both MM and MC inputs, 2 different loads for MC and 3 for MM.
The A-1000 was Yamahas top intergrated when vinyl was King,I know ,fact certain, its better than at least the Cambridge and Project , in fact IMHO it sounds better than the Slee I use.
$ 400 with a decent cart is a fantastic deal for a TT that is not great or bad but is very good.

My experience is the opposite of yours.
Thanks one and all for the good advice on what is probaly the worlds best forum for same.

I used my usual way of siteing a TT which is on a a 4" Mapleshade block sitting on Isoblocks with the TT itself on Mapleshade heavyweight brass cones.Perhaps its just a loss of touch in my old fingers, but I must say I feel no vibrations on the headshell at all.Music Hall Cork mat.

My decision is to order a Soundsmith Carmen ($600), truthfully because I was addicted to ADC moving-iron carts back in the days before CD. If no improvement on the debut carbon, I'll just put it on my TT and get her a Ortofon Blue stylus.
Perhaps, at almost 80 I know you are easier on yourself when you take chances on your hunches.Kind of Zenny .