Moving coil VS moving magnet/iron

Peter Ledermann (SoundSmith) about MI versus MC:

Lecture ONE
Lecture TWO 

There are some excellent MM cartridges out there but I feel comfortable in saying that the vast majority prefer MC cartridges because we have made the subjective assessment that they sound better.

@mijostyn If they are better than why this thread was so popular and almost everyone was so impressed with "cartridge on the month" and we ended up having hundreds of them ?

I use both types, but i don’t think that entry level MC is any better than decent MM/MI. Add the cost of the MC phonostage or SUT, the cost of re-tip that some people like so much (even with third party parts). And taking in count what Peter Ledermann trying to explain i think MM/MI is a great choice.

I remember Garrott Brothers, guys retipped and refurbished many cartridges including Koetsu and Decca, their own cartridge was MM (p77) and they made MC series by request from a person who bankrolled the brand.

There are some nice LOMC too, normally at higher price, some of them are very rare, some new are terribly expensive up to 20k.

The industry always brainwash people to sell some new overpriced LOMC, but SoundSmith and Grado still around with fairly priced units. And those vintage MM are even better.

More lectures like that would be nice to watch.

Do you know if the SME3009R is a rigid or compliant arm? The cartridge you buy, whether it be MM or MC, must match the compliance of the arm. A compliant cartridge fits with a stiff arm and vice versa.

The arm does not have a compliance, it has a mass
The cartridge damper has compliance and this is important

So the relation is Tonearm Mass and Cartridge Compliance at 10Hz to be correct.

You can say stiff cartridge (damper), but you can't say stiff tonearm

You can say that Decca also never "advertised" like that, but it’s MI and when i read comments about Decca i see how many MCs went to the dust.

Every manufacturer is free to record a video for youtube or make comments on audiogon like J.Carr did in the past.

It’s great that we can watch Peter’s lecture. Yes, his business is MI, but MC is also his business, you’re sending your broken MC to him.

If every manufacturer can share the knowledge with us it would be better, now we have Peter, who’s next?

P.S. Joseph Grado passed away long time ago.

Here is a documentary about Grado

@mijostyn Do you think the reviews are not marketing tool ? I rarely see any negative review. Everything is marketing today. So we can only buy both types of cartridges to compare, this is what i am doing myself. MM and MI are great, normally cheaper, much more convenient, does not require some crazy phono stages or other devices to make them even work. Personally i would never recommend a LOMC for beginner, only if he already have some killer MM/MI and willing to spend more for curiosity (even without luck).