Do you spend more on your cartridge or tone arm?

Mine is close to evenly split between tone arm and cartridge. With about $5K arm and $6.5K cartridge. You can do well with quite a bit of variability. I have heard some great systems with 2 x or more on the cartridge... or 2x on tone arm. I think with the dedicated isolation platform and tt... Have another $10K in the table, and $20K in the phonostage.

@inna

phono stage must be real good for $4k cartridge, even for $2k cartridge for that matter. In my view, generally speaking, two/three times more expensive than cartridge

Hah....there you are generalizing again. Again, I say it depends. :)

I have Boulder 1108 phono-stage, retails for $21K. It supports two phono inputs, and I have two Lyra Atlas Lambda (which are now $14k, each). My setup doesn’t satisfy your generalization about it but I can’t think of a better balance for high quality. I would need a $28k-42k phono-stage by your approach.

Some time ago I had a bare Naim Superline (i.e. no PSU) for $4600 and used a Dynavector XV-1s ($5850). That was a most wonderful combination and the Superline really did the DV justice. I would recommend it and know from the Naim community forums that others do the same.

I wish I could afford one Lyra Atlas Lambda cartridge. I am going to use a Cardas Myrtle Heart (retipped thanks to house keeper).  

dwette, if one could experiment freely, surprises of a sort may happen, but one would have to try a lot of arm/cartridge/phono stage combinations. $15k cartridge might sound just excellent in $1k arm but it's not the point, the point is to bring out everything this cartridge is capable of and you won't be able to do it with $1k tonearm and probably with $5k tonearm either.

I don’t know. It depends on the $5K tonearm. My tonearm is $6700. I’m sure I could get more out of the Lyra with a $20K tonearm, but I assure you I am getting my money’s worth with the one I have. It's the real deal.

Like I said, it’s about balance, but generalizing on cost alone isn’t useful to me. I agree with you putting a $15k cartridge on a $1K arm isn’t optimal and poor use of funds, but that’s more extreme and not something I would consider a balanced system.

On the other end of it I see people putting $1K MM cartridges on $30K Linn LP12 Klimax turntables with $800 phono-stages and I just don’t get that.