How old is your cartridge?

Deteriorated Suspension: I was concerned, decided not to buy a used MC cartridge primarily because of suspension concerns.

I got surprisingly lucky with my 20 year old/hardly used AT440ML, I was expecting to experience problems.

I have a shop light with 30 power glass. Shocking at first sight, the aluminum cantilever was black, even more crud heading toward the intersection with the body. I figured, what the heck, nothing to lose: grab the alcohol, a brush, and my compressor (aimed carefully).

Alcohol didn't do it, seemed like I would need automotive brake cleaner. I grabbed my nearby contact cleaner, even then it took 5 rounds to get all the crud off the cantilever. I figured, the suspension might have been bad, these chemicals must have done harm.

Surprise, the damn thing sounds terrific. Downstairs slightly beats my Shure/Jico SAS, and nearly as good as new AT33PTG/II MC.

It's here in my office sounding terrific.

My first MC, I was going to go for the anniversary limited AT1000MC, but suspension concerns made me go for a new AT. These new AT's have the same performance specs as it had, why risk it?

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.

A Grado G1 mounted in a headshell and kept as a spare. 30+ years old.

I want to remind to all of you guys that Nagaoka (adored by many for some unknown reasons here) has a very stiff suspension and it’s a new cartridge, dynamic compliance of this Moving Permalloy cartridge is about 7cu @ 100Hz, remember that Denon DL-103 compliance is 5cu @ 100Hz ! The difference is very small, indeed.

So a brand new Nagaoka MP series, designed in 21st century for modern tonearms, is a low compliance cartridge (about 7 cu @ 100Hz) depends on the model, some of them are even stiffer just like DL-103, look at this Nagaoka with 5.5 cu @ 100Hz dynamic compliance!

An old DENON-103 designed in the 60s for super heavy tonearms is 5 cu @ 100Hz and every dog knows this is the lowest possible compliance on the planet!

Can you believe it ?

Now I want to remind you that classic MM cartridges like Shure are HIGH COMPLIANCE, some classic MM from the golden era are as high as 25 cu @ 100Hz. It’s nearly 5 times higher than Denon or Nagaoka!

Convert it to 10Hz and you will realize that a compliance of some great MM is 30cu - 50cu at 10Hz.

Even if you think the rubber getting stiffer, then, even after 40 years these high compliance MM cartridges are STILL HIGH COMPLIANCE. Believe it or not, you can actually measure it!

And your adorable NEW cartridges from NAGAOKA is a LOW COMPLIANCE from the start (very low for MP cartridge), why? Maybe you have to worry about NEW MM cartridges more than about an old ones? This is too stiff right out of the box from your favorite shop, how can you live with that?  

Think about it, before you will post anything about stiff suspension on 40 y.o. cartridges, especially when you want to mention an MM or MI design.

I just bought a 40-year-old cartridge.