Logical cartridge upgrade for a long time Shure M44-7 user

One reason the M44 is so bright is that the tonearm cable has a certain capacitance, and this is interacting with the rather high inductance of this cartridge to produce a high frequency peak that is quite audible!


I doubt any cartridge with 5mV will be as bright. If that is what one has been listening to for years, they might regard it as normal, but it really isn't! For more information on how this works, take a look at this webpage:
http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html
Its realistic to assume (without knowing otherwise) that the inductance of the cartridge is nearly double that of a cartridge with half the output. So drop '1000' into the calculator for the inductance value and you will see that the peak is centered around 11KHz!

You might want to play a different cartridge (like the Grado Gold) for quite a while to get used to the more neutral presentation...

@Nickpish yes, the ML is MicroLine, try it, AT is reasobably priced MM. 

Thank you all for your recommendations. 

@nickpish I'm usually slow moving with pulling the trigger on upgrades etc., so it may be a while. But I do always try to come back to threads to give an update for due diligence. Great to see someone else trying to figure out their next move past the M44. 

@atmasphere Wow. Thanks for that info. It's funny - while my ears have gotten quite used to M44, I always assumed that some of the distortion I hear (probably around 8 - 12Khz range) was due to other factors in my system. This makes a lot of sense.

I don't have a lot of experience with different cartridges, but I've had a hard time fully buying into the 'musical' descriptor for a lot of components, including carts. I feel like it's often used to justify muffled, dull characteristics. If I know for fact that Stuart Staples' singing on Tindersticks albums include a subtle but always recognizably breathy, throat-y texture (years of smoking + whiskey?), and I'm used to hearing that clearly while a cartridge like Nagaoka completely fails to extract that from the vinyl, it's hard for me to buy into the idea of it being more 'musical'. I'd say the opposite. Thanks for the recommendations and knowledge, really appreciate it!

The trick here is knowing what the original tape actually sounded like. If there are tonal aberrations in the playback it will certainly affect how you hear things. If that's the only way you've ever heard a certain recording when you hear how it was meant to sound, it may well sound wrong to you.

Nagaoka completely fails to extract that from the vinyl, it’s hard for me to buy into the idea of it being more ’musical’. I’d say the opposite.

Nagaoka MP110 made with BONDED Elliptical tip, Shure M44-7 made with BONDED Conical tip.

Nagaoka is Moving Permalloy cartridge (generator), Shure is a classic Moving Magnet but with extremely high output. 

As Jonathan Carr commented once: "The moving permalloy operating principle would be that of a Moving Iron but with increased sensitivity, which could be used alternatively to increase output, reduce moving mass, or decrease inductance."

You can definitely find much better cartridges than Nagaoka or Shure. I am not a fan of any of them too.