Cartridges: Complete Scam?

"Peddling woo to vulnerable audiophiles"

I'm touched by your concern for our sensitive selves, and presumably our pocketbooks. Be assured however that those of us that take the time to listen to a lot of cartridges and put our $ where we want can hear very substantial differences between different manufacturer's offerings and different points in the line

As others have pointed out to get the most from any cartridge setup and matching is absolutely critical and if you are going to spend four figures or up on a cartridge then you owe it to yourself to know how to set it up, and to invest in the tools for that purpose.

So I'm not at all sure where your strong online sentiment is coming from -- presumably from those who have never had the chance to spend a substantial amount of time with one of these transducers in their own system with commensurate ancillaries

For your delectation I leave you with the following link -- a review of a $12,000 dedicated mono cartridge, and personally I can believe it's worth it ... makes my $2K mono feel jealous
https://positive-feedback.com/reviews/hardware-reviews/grado-epoch-mono-cartridge/

My my Mr Madavid do you have it all wrong. Magico Q3s will sound absolutely awful paired with the sort of amp any normal person would use with your Elac bookshelves. In fact in 9 out of 10 Hi Fi shows Magico Q3s sound terrible because they get paired with the wrong sort of amps. 

Getting the most out of a set of Q3s is just like getting the most out of a cartridge -- it takes a lot of careful matching and time spent on ancillary supporting components. Simply dropping them in to your system may cause you great heartache (see this thread for what I mean https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/magico-s5-speaker-set-up-advice-please-tow-in-etc)

And as you probably know, I run Q3s and what I really like is when people come to my system they often say "these speakers are great, they don't sound like Magicos [do at shows]"

Oh and to your question on why a $5K tonearm with a $5K cartridge.

A $5K cartridge usually means the designer has spent extra effort in minimizing problematic resonances and other sources of distortion. Mounting this on a $1K tonearm that itself is subject to all sorts of distortions and resonances is simply throwing this benefit away. 

I could go on but that's just one small example of the constant in this hobby how a change in one component often throws up problems elsewhere in the chain

@madavid0 life must be very difficult for you given your propensity to find charlatans and crooks under every stone. You started this thread in the belief that cartridge manufacturers are out to rip you off but that your new MF table is the ne plus ultra of great value for money. Alas, you now are worried MF have scammed you too and that you should have stuck with an old Thorens and not wasted all that money on a new deck. Maybe you'd be better off not buying anything that way you'd never have any risk of feeling ripped off? You could then post online about how clever you were not to be scammed ... remember you cannot take it with you when you die, spend it if you have it and it makes you feel good!

@rauliruegas I have to quibble a little with your assertion that it is the responsibility of tonearm manufacturers to provide universal mounting templates. While I absolutely agree that a tonearm manufacturer must provide a very precise mounting jig (i.e. to allow drilling of the mounting holes and correcty P2S -- which is btw somewhere many fall down) I question if we can expect them to provide tools to mount any cartridge. Given the vagaries in cartridge design and geometry tools such as the UNI Protractor I own (the more specialized precursor to the SMARTractor) allow one to get a much better view of the cantilever and stylus alignment -- yes you could get your own lens and set up and use it with the Mint but the UNI makes it so easy and precise it should better anything you expect from a tonearm manufacturer, and is priced accordingly.

As an aside I remember seeing one of the online retailers (maybe Music Direct) offering to give you a deluxe turntable setup using the SMARTractor (along with USB microscope for VTA, Foz for azimuth and so on) for $500 on top of the cost of a new table -- gives you a sense of what they think this service is worth

Anyway I accept that we should expect more from our arm manufacturers but there's still room for the top end tools some of us like to use

@rauliruegas surely then by this logic the tonearm manufacturer should also provide the following in the box with their arm
1) A fozgometer (or other azimuth setting tool)
2) A test record
3) A USB microscope (or at least an alignment block with a VTA grid)
4) An accurate tracking force gauge

Each of the above is as critical to setup as is alignment so why do you only expect the tonearm makers to provide the templates for alignment?

@madavid0 perhaps you can spend some more time doing research and reading before bugging us again

here are two good starting points on this topic
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/stepup/primer.html
http://www.rothwellaudioproducts.co.uk/html/mc_step-up_transformers_explai.html