I recommend a Coral 777. Same mc cartridge imported by Jim Bongiorno in the late 70's. Sold as the GAS Sleeping Beauty. Available with 3 stylus profiles: spherical, super elliptical and shibata. Prices then were: $180, $200 and $240. I bought the super elliptical and used it for many years (along with a Verion Cotter P SUT) - until the suspension failed! Superb sound quality! Lately I've bought another one (used) and plan to use it on my Linn Sondek/Grace 707. There are two more for sale now on EBAY. |
@russellrcncom depends on which SME, but Ortofon SPU ROYAL G MKII with nude Replicant 100 diamond is a killer low compliance cartridge (if you’re refer to the Koetsu) along with Fidelity-Research FR-7f . I can swap those two without changing any parameters of my Lustre GST-801 tonearm (same tracking force, same weight). They are all close to your budget. I hope you said "other than koetsu" just because the price for used koetsu is much higher, not because you don’t like the koetsu? I would call the SPU Royal G mk2 a "rich sounding" like no other SPU i have owned before which makes me think it is because of the Replicant 100. Retail was 2200 Euro. I’ve noticed Ortofon uses Replicant 100 on their top of the line modern MC cartridges like this $4000 Windfeld Ti introduced by Leif Johannsen to Michael Fremer this year: https://youtu.be/chX535CWgUo Cleeds gave you the worst scenario, a typical phobia to buy used cartridges online. Sounds so strange for me, never had problems with used cartridges that comes from collectors and audiophiles who uses many of them with very low hrs of use on each of them. Let me add my 50 cents for the advanced profiles like the Replicant 100 or Gyger or Micro Ridge with extremely long life (up to 1500 hrs or even more without needs for retip) which is a way different from the elliptical (that must be retipped every 500 hrs). |
