Cartridge Opinions - Sorry

@mijostyn That 92 degree SRA thing is an approximation- an average. Any LP will actually be slightly different. Hard to know how much of it you'll actually hear.

please post your favorite tonearms, except for Triplanar and SME

FWIW while I had the SME5 for some years, It's not one of my faves, although the 12" seems to be pretty nice. The 4-point arms from Kuzma have worked well for me. The problem here is that I have master tapes and I've only heard a couple of combinations that really held up in that regard. To that end, even though I don't have one, the Triplanar 12" seems to be the best I've heard. Now if you leave the master tape issue out of it, I've heard a lot of arms that seemed to sound just fine.

Hm, a turntable manufacturer thinks the arm is more important, a cartridge manufacturer think the cartridge is more important. Never mind that in the latter's explanation, he lists a number of reasons the arm is a lot more important than he suggests!.

Its no secret that Raul prefers digital. Most of the people I know that play vinyl insist that it sounds better than digital. All this says to me is that Raul isn't in this to be informative- he's in it to be right. There is a profound difference.
@kennyc  Its important not to take anything that shows up on internet forums personally- else the fatigue sets in quite quickly and the trolls win.

Linn seems to think that the cartridge manufacturer should have exacting manufacturing tolerances to make azimuth errors irrelevant.

They are 100% correct. Too bad actual cartridges don't hold up to this ideal.

Now granted there are a few talented experienced folk that can reach optimization by ear, but many/most have not experienced “optimum”. @atmasphere seems to be alluding that there’s much more performance that can be wrung out of your existing cartridge if it is not yet optimized.

This. +1 

Due to the crude adjustments or complete lack of adjustments on many arms, optimizing the cartridge is very difficult if not impossible! If ever there were things that cause analog to be problematic as opposed to digital, this is certainly one of the big ones. Flip that coin over- if you have an arm where every adjustment is easy, and add to that no arm tube resonance and no chatter in the bearings then you can get the cartridge to perform.


I can give many examples but a small one is this: If you wish to optimize VTA using an SME5 it is done by raising the arm. But first you have to use a tool to loosen the arm pillar from the base. Then you can use the threaded rod on the left side of the arm that bears against the mounting plate, thus raising the arm. Did you go too high? backing up the adjuster does not cause the arm to sink- you have to push it down. Hint: Apply a dot of white paint to the top knurled knob (which should be several times larger) so you can count the number of turns you've set up... watch it though- when you loosen the arm pillar, the arm can rotate with respect to its base. Point is- its tricky. With the arm I have now there are two graduated scales and I can adjust the VTA on the fly. This design has been copied by a lot of arm manufacturers but SME isn't one of them. 


Arm tube resonance is the simple fact that the arm tube is made of something, and that something can vibrate. It should be damped so it can be neutral. Most arms have nothing in this regard- some do. Now if your arm tube is editorializing while you are trying to play music, will your cartridge perform the way it should? Of course not. If the bearings in the arm chatter because they are set slightly loose, same thing. If the bearings are in the plane of the arm tube rather than the LP surface, same thing.


I master LPs. I know what the master tapes sound like, and how LPs produced thusly are supposed to sound. I heartily recommend to anyone to do something similar- at the very least get a nice set of microphones and record something you can stand to listen to and get it mastered to LP. Then you will have a reference. This is invaluable!


The bottom line is as quoted above.

 the Denon 103 is a pretty nice cartridge for the money.

It is. Lots of nice comments from our customers.

Second the suggestion of a Hana cartridge.

And a third. One of my employees uses this cartridge- tracks anything.

But doesn’t all the magic happen in the (LIVE) recording venue of the studio? The position, location and placements of (booms) mics, musicians, room sound treatments, the experience level of a competent recording engineer ect?

Am I wrong to notice not only the science of a recording but the ART form as well? I think there is a bit more that goes INTO a recording than what you say above.

I agree with this 100%! But it really isn't anything relevant to this debate.

When a blank piece of vinyl is cut at the factory, in your opinion which is more important. The cartridge/stylus making the grooves or the tone arm?

There really isn't an arm- and you don't cut vinyl- you cut a lacquer. My Westerex 3D is as good an example as any, as a cutter head its a mechanical transducer built into an articulated mount- but its one assembly- I don't know of a setup that allows a different transducer in the mechanism- they can't be seperated. There isn't an arm because the mount drives the cutter across the lacquer with a worm drive. My cutter deals with warp (which had better be pretty minuscule in a lacquer) using a device called a 'track ball' which allows me to set the groove depth. So this really doesn't hold up in this debate either.

It's important to get setup right but don't get too obsessive. There will always be the odd opera torture track that will give most arm/cart combos hiccups.

There had better not be! I've yet to run into such a track- my system breezes through everything effortlessly.

I would have to say that I disagree with this. There is a huge difference between my Benz Micro and my Koetsu Onyx. On well engineered recordings, it’s not really close. There is an audible difference between them and my Koetsu Rosewood Signature.

Now, I suppose you could say that I don’t have the Benz "set up" properly.

I have a Sumiko MMT arm in a VPI HW MK IV table. Do those components allow for the adjustments needed to "set up" properly, which in my 40 years of experience has simply meant to use that protractor-looking thingy and follow the instructions of each manufacturer, then fiddle until it sounds the best that I can make them?

@unreceivedogma I've owned the MMT; its a tricky arm to get the adjustments right. And yes, its a good bet that something was off with the Benz; it could simply be that it had a compliance value that in tandem with its weight and the resulting mechanical resonance, it simply was not going to be able to strut its stuff where the Koetsu did. If you're dealing with that, you can set the tracking pressure and VTA till the cows come home and the cartridge still won't track right!


The problem we're dealing with here is that the groove is ***microscopic***, so tiny adjustments have an enormous effect on how the cartridge makes distortion. By 'tiny' I do mean at or near microscopic. Most arms simply do not have the necessary provisions to do this right- you can get the basic stuff like tracking pressure and maybe even overhang, but the nuances are where this really makes a difference. Look up above in my post here- I've quoted someone who has come to accept that some records 'will give most arm/cart combos hiccups.' This might be the case- but its a good sign also that something is amiss- and the most likely culprit is the arm not the cartridge unless the cartridge is actually damaged or its suspension is shot. I can list a good number of arm issues that can cause mistracking, and it really doesn't matter which cartridge you have.

IOW, if the arm isn't doing its job, expect mistracking. Obviously the converse is also true, if the arm ***is*** doing its job, then the cartridge will track effortlessly. When its effortless, that is when you will find that the cartridge (as long as its in good condition) plays a far less significant role in this.

And is it also fair to see a boom as similar to the functions of a tone arm since it has also inside of the boom wires that carry the music’s electric signal from the mic to the recording magnetic tape?

Right  here is where the analogy falls apart. A mic boom is simply holding the mic in the right location, but in that regard is rigid and does not have to articulate. It doesn't need much in the way of adjustments and they come in different sizes depending on application. Certainly no worries about things like effective mass, mechanical resonance 7-12Hz or the like.


I've been doing consumer electronics service since the day after I graduated from high school back in the 1970s. One time a customer came in the shop and actually wanted a magnetic cartridge installed in his VM turntable. Now some of you here might know what those are, obviously others here do not. I had to explain to him that the idea simply wouldn't work- that if he wanted that cartridge because it sounds better and would be better to his records, he was going to need a tonearm that could do the job. A VM turntable is designed for a ceramic cartridge that tracks a bit heavier than any magnetic cartridge- 5-7 grams is common. The VM arms have no provision for setting overhang, and barely anything for setting tracking weight. Now I don't know how far to push this, but it should be obvious to anyone in audio that working with an arm like that, you're simply not going to get the best out of any magnetic cartridge! Its a given.

So starting from there, we all know that correct overhang is critical to getting the sound right, so is the tracking pressure and VTA. And yet there are 'high end' tonearms that have no VTA provision; by the argument I'm seeing presented here, the conclusion we see this heading to is that VTA does not matter to any cartridge (Raul indirectly made this argument). Obviously that is false! Now having worked with a lot of arms and having built my own, I know that the arm tube resonance is a thing, even though there's no adjustment for it. It can make a big difference as to how the arm plays the mids and highs. So in any potential arm I'm looking at, I expect the arm tube to be damped in some way. A good number I see are not. Now if you can hear what that does, are we going to ignore that and just say that makes no difference whatsoever?? Most audiophiles I know don't mind a bit spending the time to set up their cartridge correctly; I am really failing to see how the cartridge can eclipse the arm in this. All my experience points to the contrary, and in spades.

Even Rega is a good tonearm and has not VTA adjustment.

As long as you use their cartridge. Otherwise its problematic.  Good luck if you want to use a different turntable or platter pad (as they affect the sound as well).

Now, we can have a great cartridge mounted in a great tonearm and even can't shows at its best if the TT/cartridge/tonearm overall alignment/geometry set up is not made it accurately.

Some arms simply will not allow you to set the cartridge up correctly. That seems to be a fault of the arm. So this comment belies Raul's argument.

This is why tonearm is second, cartridge is first (unless you are trying to use mismatched components).

The conclusion here does not seem to be supported by the post in which it occurs. You will not get the minimum distortion out of any cartridge if the arm is unable to track the cartridge properly. This is a very simple fact with which all audiophiles are intimately familiar if they have used a turntable! I really don't get why anyone would argue the other way, unless for the sport of it...

Although I do agree with others here that the stylus and cartridge maybe more important than the tone arm WHEN mechanically reproducing sound from vinyl.

@tyray Dave Slagle recently sent an article to me by Peter Moncreif, who did some testing on cartridges and how they make distortion. It was an interesting read! I found it interesting that while he was able to show that the cartridges did seem to make distortion, he really didn't go into much about the arm despite testing a good number of cartridges. Yet no mention of the arm, but we all know that getting the cartridge/arm combination to work its mechanical resonance has to be in the 7-12Hz range, and otherwise how tiny little tweaks in the adjustment can have a huge affect on the result!


It obvious to me that if there is an adjustment on an arm that is tricky to set up, the chances of getting it correct are vastly reduced. We've all heard cartridges make distortion; if you can set all the parameters right, then its clear that distortion is reduced. I've seen arms that don't allow for adjusting the VTA, others that allow you to adjust it, but only by loosening a screw and moving the entire arm (the old Grace is an example of this); many have no adjustment for azimuth whatsoever... To put this to an extreme to make my point, you can't expect to put a $5000 cartridge in a Voice of Music tonearm (google images...) and expect it to work properly! So at what point do you draw the line? What I've found is that the arm is more important if you really want to get things right- so that is where I make that distinction.

I am not going to say you have low level knowledge because of that.

:)  +1

At least from a technical standpoint. If it is not over-tightened then it is free to move. If it is free to move then there must be an interference gap, however small, between the moving parts.

If so the runout can't be detected. I guess we'll just have to agree that we disagree on this point.

A gimbal set-up must always have some free-play in its bearings, otherwise the arm wand would be unable to move.

This statement is false. If a bearing in a gimbal system is over-tightened the arm can still move but a lot depends on the bearing. At some point if tightened too much the arm will get quite stiff, and likely also the bearing will be damaged. The latter issue is far more profound with jeweled bearings, which is why they often have some slop to prevent damage. If a metal bearing is hard enough, this issue is overcome. The SME5 is a good example of this as is the Triplanar and I suspect there are others- its a big world out there.

Regarding the tonearms I just don't understand what do you mean. Because I've been using Technics most of my life and never had a miss tracking or something (and Grado DJ200i was on it for a long time).

Yes- I can imagine this is true- a friend of mine has the EPA-100 and I've not heard it mistrack. But just because this is so does not mean that the cartridge is actually tracking its best. But the difference is both audible and measurable.

I do not know which Grado I ran back in the 80s. I do remember that the Pickering was a 4500. The Stanton was the 881. I got it next door at Sound of Music next to where I worked at the Allied Radio Shack. That is also where I bought my Technics SL1100, equipped with a Rabco arm. The ULTRA 500 was after I was done with Shure (so the type III and type IV I had *were* their top of the line at the time)- the story was at the time that they were no longer going to make cartridges but that turned out to not be true.  By that time I had gone to the Grado, which was the most I'd ever spent on a cartridge.

I didn't dislike these cartridges- quite the opposite-  I simply played them until the suspension bagged out, and bought the next 'hot tip' that my audiophile friends were talking about.

In your theory tonearm is more important that a cartridge, but you never mentioned exact models of those great MM you have triend, except for the Grado Gold which is clearly not the best but was equal to your best LOMC. Well this statement speaks for itself.

It does, in that it is false. What I said was that the Grado Green did that bit. What I mentioned about the Gold is that we use it in the mastering studio to ascertain if a track we've cut will play out properly. If the Gold in the Technics SL1200 plays without distortion, then we can go ahead and do the cut. Lacquers are 14" instead of 12" so sometimes we'll do the test cut outside the lead-in grooves. I modified the SL1200 so that it plays the 14" disks just fine.

Now you might notice something- that actually we're more in agreement here than not. You want to say that the vintage cartridges are the hot setup, and all I've been maintaining through this ordeal is that the arm's ability to track the cartridge is paramount. These are not mutually contradictory statements. But you do seem to be attempting to discredit me nevertheless.

 In earlier threads on audiogon, when I asked about your MM cartridges, I never seen any top models even from Grado, AT, Pickering, Stanton or Shure mentioned in your answers.

Yes- that's all true. But- this appears in contradiction to

Low model Grado cartridges, Shure V15, all Stanton/Pickering (except 4 top models) do not belong to the "best MM" or "best MI" cartridges today.

The Grado Gold is the top end cartridge Grado makes that is not a wood body. The Shure V15 was of course their flagship cartridge for many years. The Pickering and Stantons I had were also their top models. There's a bit of a moving target here- even though these were flagship cartridges at the time you now seem to feel comfortable denigrating them.

Also-'Today'?? Wait- did I miss something- haven't you been on about **vintage** cartridges? No- here you are going on about that on a different but related thread:

Those old cartridges are superior to many new cartridges, condition must be perfect.

Its easy to see these quotes are inconsistent. In the US we have a saying- 'you can't have it both ways'. You discount my comments saying I've not had any experience with top drawer MM cartridges. Then it turns out I do. Only now those top drawer cartridges don't count, except for those that do (excepting somehow that if I have experience with them they don't); apparently its *some other* vintage MM cartridge??... When I encounter comments like this, the 'moving target' thing is a sure sign they were made to be verbally abusive.


So if you could- knock it off.

Reading all these I want to remind that Ralph's experience with MM cartridges is very limited to certain mainstream models, I already asked about those models and never seen any serious MM in his list.

@chakster pretty funny! just sort of an FYI, I put myself through MIT (Minnesota) repairing consumer electronics in service departments throughout the 70s and continued after college doing a lot of setup and repairs for a local high end audio dealer; we still service audio gear in our shop, as there really are very few shops in Minnesota that can handle high end and studio gear. In the old days (70s, 80s) before the Grados I used several versions of the Shure V15 as well as Stanton, Pickering, AudioTechnica and a few others that escape memory right now. I've literally set up hundreds of cartridges over the last 50 years in all variety of arms. 

The Micro Benze did indeed work fine on my Graham 2.2. So did the Benz Ruby. But then it sounded even better on the Origin Live Conqueror.  

I found the Micro Benz worked better in my Triplanar as well. It was quite a trooper- I ran it for about 14 years.

just realized my Technics uses a gimbal design

Yes it does. The new Technics arm is actually quite an improvement over its predecessor of a few years ago, even though it looks identical. 

Any one that owns an unipivoted tonearm design has very low knowledge levels on the tonearm/cartridge overall issue and you are not an exception to that.

This sort of blanket statement is really problematic. The later Graham Phantom is a very decent unipivot- magnetically stabilized. I had gone from the SME5 to the Graham 2.2 because the latter worked with a larger range of cartridges, but the Grado was not one of them. If you had the right cartridge on it there was not 'dance/jump' at all. The Micro Benz did quite well on that arm. But the Triplanar as tracked any cartridge I've installed on it perfectly (which is to say no breakup and effortless no matter how heavy the groove was modulated), once I get the effective mass right.

@luisma31 Well if the cartridge won't track properly its not going to be all that magical :)  You really do want to get that bit right.


Now you may have noticed something- with MM cartridges you can't get as much bandwidth. This probably isn't a big deal since the LP is bandwidth limited above about 45KHz or so and there probably isn't any information up there anyway other than noise. But I'm looking at this from a phase shift issue- when you have out of band frequency fluctuations they can introduce phase shift in the audio band, although for the most part it will be above 8 or 9KHz so this may not be much of a concern. But I like to cover all the bases- its very much like looking after the little things that add weight to a bicycle- the more you get right, the more likely the final result will have more detail, deeper wider soundstage, stuff like that.


So I'm a bit hesitant to say which is more important to get things right (get the 'magic'). But if the cartridge mistracks it certainly won't happen. But if it is tracking effortlessly, that is when its important that all the electrical parameters are right too. So I guess I see it as a bit  like a string of pearls  :)

What tonearm adjustments do you view as necessary to be considered a good tonearm for yourself?

@scar972 The reason I like the Triplanar is that its so adjustable. You can dial in the VTA (the VTA tower pioneered by Triplanar is now seen in a variety of different arms) with great ease and on-the-fly, you can adjust the azimuth, you can even adjust the mechanical resonance. The bearings are in the same plane as the LP surface; this allows for a more constant tracking pressure when dealing with warp and bass modulation. I think the ability to mess with the mechanical resonance is what I find most valuable because the mass of a cartridge is always a variable in that; this means that the arm works with a wider range of cartridges.


To give you an idea of what that's about, I used to have a Graham 2.2. I tried using a Grado wood body cartridge in that arm and encountered something called the 'Grado dance' although this is not something that is a particular fault of Grados (which are a great cartridge) or for that matter the arm. This was simply because the arm mass in tandem with the suspension of the cartridge could set up a resonance (particularly noticeable at the beginning of the LP, where the resonance could cause the stylus to leap out of the groove). In addition the cartridge would mistrack when the music got more intense.The Triplanar has a similar mass, but by setting up the counterweights correctly the problem is avoided entirely and the Grados track effortlessly in that arm.

what would you consider as a high output cartridge? Anything over 3mV

2.5mV? Only because this is about the minimum that a phono section designed for MM cartridges will handle properly.

But the answer isn't simple. The lower the output of the cartridge, the lower its inductance. This will push the resonant peak created by the inductance and capacitance to a higher frequency *and* amplitude. I've noticed that the lower output cartridges won't ring at audio frequencies but the high output cartridges do (which is why they need to be loaded to sound right). Obviously there is an area where the cartridge would have a bit of of both characteristics. Take a look at this link, it is helpful at explaining what is going on:
http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html

@rauliruegas you left out this bit:

Since then I've seen this simple fact play out again and again. Now we all know that if a cartridge isn't set up right it can have more distortion- and this is easily measured. And we also know that some arms simply won't allow you to set up a cartridge correctly as some of the adjustments needed to dial it in simply don't exist. So its not stupid- in fact I am suggesting quite the opposite: if you can't set up the cartridge properly you are leaving performance on the table! This should be really obvious to any audiophile...

You have no idea what you are talking about and your statements are boarding stupidity land.

Again, after LP cartridge is the most important item in the analog rig.

You might try it.


I discovered that the arm is more important when one channel of my Transfiguation failed and I had to send it back. While it was gone I needed something to play, and the only thing around at the time was a Grado Green new in the box. Since the Triplanar is so adjustable it was a cinch to set it up right- I was only setting it up so I could play something but its so easy to do I spent the time to be precise; but still I was unprepared for what happened next.

And that was that the Grado was perfectly able to easily track anything I threw at it. This was a bit of a surprise as a $35.00 cartridge shouldn't have been able to do that according to my beliefs at the time. It was a bit forward sounding but then I remembered how important loading is for high output cartridges, so I set it up with a 10K resistor on the cartridge loading strip on the back of my preamp, and then it was just as relaxed and detailed as my Tranfiguration. There was no torture track it didn't handle with great ease. The real difference between the two was that it obviously had more output.

Since then I've seen this simple fact play out again and again. Now we all know that if a cartridge isn't set up right it can have more distortion- and this is easily measured. And we also know that some arms simply won't allow you to set up a cartridge correctly as some of the adjustments needed to dial it in simply don't exist. So its not stupid- in fact I am suggesting quite the opposite: if you can't set up the cartridge properly you are leaving performance on the table! This should be really obvious to any audiophile...

Now this is something that I have no surprise that I might get pushback for; the last thing you want to hear if you spent top dollar on a cartridge is finding out a few hundred dollars at the most may have served just as well, but keep in mind that a Triplanar is a $5500.00 instrument and not everyone has one. Some people might say 'well what about loading on that moving coil' and of course I've answered that many times (look elsewhere on this forum); its simply not a variable.


One other thing- obviously people if they are thinking about this might be curious what I'm running now and at home its still the Transfiguration. This is for several reasons- the first is that it sounds just fine so I'm not motivated to cause my hand to move and replace it with something less expensive just because I can. The second is the Transfiguration has held up surprisingly well over the last ten years and to my knowledge, most MM cartridges would have had the suspension of the cantilever fail at least twice in that time. Finally, as a manufacturer if I have a client come to my home, I don't have to explain to them the reasoning behind an inexpensive cartridge- this last bit due to a phenomena known as the Veblen Effect

Since when?. Everything the same the cartridge self quality level performance is an makes a difference.

Apparently since tonearms have been available that are adjustable enough that they can really get the cartridge to track properly.

The big deal you're going to find is that if the tonearm properly tracks the cartridge, then the choice of cartridge is far less important than people make it out. By 'properly track' I mean that no matter what is in the grooves, the music is always relaxed and well-defined, no hint of stress or breakup; almost as if you were listening to tape.