How old is your cartridge?

Any serious driving enthusiast knows the single biggest factor in new car ride and handling is the suspension and motor mounts are all brand new elastomer. Some of them have gotten pretty sophisticated over the years but with older cars its a relatively simple process to change these things out. After a good 15 years its guaranteed to make a solid positive difference. Even just sitting in the garage the darn things wear and settle resulting in imprecise suspension geometry and slop and play under load. 

As usual this is not from parroting blather others spouted its from actually having done the work replacing these things on a 240Z and a 911. Heed the words of experience. 

Like I said, this is one of those things that sure seems it has to be the same with cartridges. Only it never seems to work out that way. Probably because this is but one very small item on a very long list of items determining sound quality. Maybe something to do with there being some sort of difference between a car that weighs a ton and a cantilever that's some tiny fraction of a gram? 

Any decent engineer should be able to tell the difference. You'd a thunk.

Got a Stanton 681EEE from 1976. Old enough to tell me the suspension getting hard argument is another one that sounds good but falls apart in the real world. Meanwhile the one I use every day is a Koetsu Black Goldline now going on 3 years. It will like the vast majority of cartridges be replaced with a better one long before it needs to by wear alone.