I’m running an SPU Royal N and getting wonderful results but it taken a lot of very fine adjustment to get there. It always has a full bodied sound but except for a very fine rage of VTA and VTF (~3g) gives a somewhat measured pace to the music, good for classical but not rock. Get them right and it gains a real spring to its step and a large scale and deep soundstage, Now it will rock its socks off if you haven’t overtightened the mounting bolts and on my rm the counterweight grub screw. This is all in the context of a Schröder Reference, I don’t know how much applies to other arms. The arm effective mass should be north of 18g and the cartridge itself weighs in at near 16. VPI are rather coy about the mass of their tonearms, at least on the internet.
A cadenza bronze uses the same stylus as the Royal N (and the Winfield, Anna etc), I think I’d take this over a black, I know someone who loved it in the 11g Naim Aro.
Rebuild cost of the Royal N was a bit over 50% of a new cartridge, VPI have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to antiskate (as Rega do with VTA) but setting it too low resulted in a skewed cantilever after a year.