Lack of vinyl bass and midrange


I have a SOTA Star Saphire turntable with ET-2 arm and Monster Alpha Genesis 1000 cartridge that I have reinserted into my system after years of disuse. Problem is the sound is anemic with lack of bass and midrange compared to CD. I have a McCormick Micro phono stage with 100 ohm load. When I last had this turntable in my system it sounded great. Any ideas as to the source of this problem would be greatly appreciated.
panamanian

Showing 1 response by nsgarch

With a great rig like yours, I think you really owe it to yourself to buy a modern cartridge. Without naming specific models, I'd recommend:

Transfiguration
Lyra
van den Hul
ZYX
Shelter

and if you can get the Monster rebuilt for two to three hundred dollars, great! Keep it as a spare. The Stylast solution is a little like using Armorall on old plastic, i.e. you cannot re-polymerize old dried-out rubber/plastic products. You can only temporarily "knit up" the unravelling molecular chains, but they will never give you the original performance, and will come undone again in relatively short time.