Cartridges: Complete Scam?

Hey guys,

I´m not exactly new to analog, but I´m certainly a new kid on the block here at Audiogon. I would like to thank you all for your posts, this forum has been a valuable source of information (and entertainment) to me for the past couple years. On to the OP question: it is not a scam, but analog takes a lot of effort. We´re hardly talking plug and play stuff here and there´s a lot more into replacing a cart than there´s into replacing a DAC (or a cd-player for that matter). 

You may buy a cart that´s 10 times more expensive and get bad results if your tone-arm is not up to the task of handling the new cart. Things can also go very bad if your phono is not a good match to it. I have a love and hate relationship with analog, but that´s all part of the fun. Of course it is not a scam, much in the same way that power cords are not a scam. I don´t mean to be rude here, but I usually find that those kind of comments mostly come from people who are not willing to (or simply cannot) afford this kind of stuff. 

If everything else is working properly (tonearm and phono) with the new cart, the differences are instantly recognizable and not minimal. They´re quite addictive actually, but careful system matching is crucial and there are so many components in an analog rig that you can easily screw things up by replacing the cart (even for a much more expensive unit). 

@madavid0

Properly matched does not mean matched to equally expensive gear, but to technically compatible gear. You have to look for compliance, mass, impedance, gain... that’s all.

Provided that the well regarded $2-3k cart is a good match (technically speaking, not financially) to the rest of your analog rig, you will definitely hear a lot of improvement. If it´s not, it may not sound any better than what you currently have. 

hope this helps...

Dear OP,

Even though English is not my mother tongue, I do believe my couple previous posts were quite easily understandable. I'm with Raul on this: you're either unable or not willing to understand what people are telling you. I will completely disregard cart/tonearm/phono synergy and compatibility issues and give you the most honest answer that I can, having myself bought and/or experienced a variety of cartridges ranging from U$200,00 to U$10,000: YES, IT MAKES A LOT OF DIFFERENCE and the upgrades are not subtle, but rather like "I CANNOT live without this improvement". I wanted to believe that there's no difference between a thousand dollars cartridge and a four thousand dollars cartridge, but I know for a fact that the improvement is quite shocking and I learned that when I upgraded from a Dynavector Karat D3 to a Transfiguration Phoenix S. So much so that I couldn't stop there. It is not a scam and that setup you heard would have performed A LOT better with an analog front-end costing as much as the TAD speakers. 

Best,

Luiz

@chakster and @lewm,

Thank you for your replies! I should have written that there are huge differences between new cheap and expensive LOMC cartridges. 

I did not intend to compare what seems to be apples and oranges to me (vintage carts and new carts) and should have made that point clearer in my post.

I agree with Chakster that a vintage MM (if properly matched to the tonearm) can provide results that are as satisfying as a new setup costing many times as much, however there's a great deal of knowledge and a somehow steep learning curve when it comes to the used market.

I also recently came accross a vintage AT Signet MK-111E that was an absolute steal at a little over 300 bucks, considering that it most likely smokes any new LOMC costing 10 times as much, but I don't think that it's fair to compare new MSRP with vintage prices, at least not for the purposes of determining whether a 2/3k LOMC is a scam compared to a much cheaper new LOMC cartridge.

Best,

Luiz