Do you spend more on your cartridge or tone arm?

It can easily go either way. For me, I happily spend more on cartridges. I’ve got a few of my favorite old arms (Fidelity Research). I’ve had newer and more expensive arms, and still went back. Rolling cartridges is a lot more fun, especially when the arm uses headshells.

A lot of guys are operating under the principle that vinyl playback is like a math or computer optimization problem - there is some objective, absolute "best" result to be had, and once setup has been mastered, it’s generally to be attained by throwing more expensive hardware at the problem. This is where "weakest link" theories find favor.

But past a certain point, I think it starts to be like an ice cream parlor. What combination of base flavor(s) and toppings do you like best? Cone or bowl? Dipped or nah? I’ve liked most combinations, but loved few (huh, maybe it’s more like girls). If someone else doesn’t like your favorite sundae - who cares.

If top-level cartidges were converging towards a similar kind of sound, I’d believe it was more the former than the latter. But they don’t, not really.

Synergy of 5 almost impossible to isolate components; Cartridge, Arm, TT, Mechanical / acoustic isolation and finally the phono stage… infinite number of combinations.near anyway…

@tomic601  Yep, this too - synergy is key!!