MC versus MM. Which to choose.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I recommend you start with the MM Audio Technica AT150MLX. It's a very high performance MM with replaceable stylus. Thanks to economy of scale, the AT150MLX serves up a lot more tracking ability, frequency extension, low level detail, and dynamics than you customarily get for around $325. It's Abso!ute Sound's Cartridge of the Year this year. It comes with a nuded MicroLine stylus, the kind that usually only shows up on $2000+ MC cartridges. It's a great stylus that plays in the unworn parts of your record grooves.

It gives you a solid introduction to the resolution of high end cartridges while retaining the advantages of a high output MM cartridge--lower noise (because less gain is needed in the phono stage), user-replaceable stylus (about $225), no immediate need for an MC transformer or high gain phono stage, and less challenge in load matching to the phono stage--100-200 pF in cabling and/or phono stage input will do it.

If you decided to move up to an expensive MC cartridge in the future, you'll want to keep the AT150MLX around as a backup, especially when you have to send the MC to an expert to get it retipped.

12-22-11: Inna
So why do some still prefer MM? They must have certain qualities to go after that MC just cannot have or can but at very high price point.

I don't have the quote in front of me just now, but I read the Abso!ute Sound review of the AT150MLX just a few days ago, and the reviewer mentioned that although the AT150MLX doesn't have that last little bit of air and detail up in the highs, it has more musical "body" to the tonal balance, which makes it easy to get lost in the music instead of the details (I'm paraphrasing here).

My own perception is similar. I grew up with live music, have two siblings who made or make a living in music performance and direction, and played and listened to a lot of live music myself. I still play live music in public regularly and get to live orchestral concerts several times a year. The tonal balance, detail balance, and overall timbres I get from my system, sourced from an AT150MLX, never seems to set a foot wrong. The music sounds "right," making it easier to get lost in the art of the music itself rather than being distracted by the artifices that create and play back the recording.