Cartridge for Denon DP 3000 NE

Dear @andykatz  : As a fact the Denon tonearm can handled almost any cartridge between 4grs-16grs.. It has high movement for VTA changes and changeable headshell that's a huge advantage for you because different build material headshells mates better or not with almost any cartridge.

Now, you already own the 2M black and you can improve the Ortofon quality level performance changing only its replacement stylus with the up-graded  LVB 250 that you can buy directly from Ortofon and if I were you that's my very first action/move down there with out needs to change the cartridge you will have a new one with better quality performance.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

"I decided to upgrade my turntable in part because a persistent hum associated with the white cartridge wire..." Maybe you should have investigated that phenomenon further before investing in a new TT. White wire usually carries left channel "hot", assuming you are not running in balanced mode. So one question is what made you conclude that the white wire was involved in causing hum? If the left channel hot wire was in contact with ground, due for example to a short circuit inside the tonearm wand, that would usually result in no signal at all, not hum. But there are some other scenarios that might result in hum.

You go on to write, after purchasing the Denon TT, that, "I noticed one channel played very faintly. I checked the anti-skate, vertical tracking & stylus force ... nothing had any impact." Once those remotely possible causes of reduced gain in one channel were eliminated, did you check to see if the reduced gain could have been also related to wiring? If so, was the reduced gain in the L channel, by any chance? Anyway, since this problem occurred with the new Denon turntable, the scant evidence suggests that both the hum and the loss of gain might be due to an issue downstream from the TT/tonearm. Additional evidence to support that idea is your finding that when you switched to a Grado Gold cartridge, you now had equal gain in both channels but "terrible hum". In this process, have you checked your phono ICs or the input jacks on your phono stage? What I am getting at is that you charged forward, and continue to do so, without investigating the causes of the hum, dropout, and etc, that you are experiencing.

Sorry if I wasn't clear about all my efforts to root out the problem. I used new ICs on the turntable. When I switched them from left to right the problem persisted on the left side. When I connected the turntable directly to the integrated amp's phono, bypassing the Parasound phono stage, it persisted there as well. Also, if it's a downstream issue, why is the Ortofon OM playing like a champ? 

Appreciate the comments.

Intermittent problems like these are often the most difficult to diagnose and eliminate. Sometimes the physical acts required to change a cartridge or IC, the plugging and unplugging can create or mask the issue. Check the solder joints at cartridge clips. Check also inside your phono stage the connections between internal wires and the hot and ground nodes of the RCA jacks. For example take a tweezers and tug gently on those phono stage wires. Something’s going on somewhere.

Thanks. I'll check them out as best I can.