New cart for under 1K


I am looking to buy a new cartrdige for my setup. My current system consists of a VPI Scout II with a Black Knight platter and 10.5SE tonearm (the TT Michael Fremer demonstrated a cartridge setup at last years show in NYC), JM Focal 936's, Mac solid state power & pre, and a Dynavector P-75 phono pre-amp. The Focal's are very accurate and tend to be bright in the highs. Brightness is what I am trying to avoid. I've found the highs to be too harsh for my liking, especially with vocals. Sibilance is also an issue and something I have attempted to control with speaker placement, VTA, damping fluid, and the tone controls on my old Mac preamp. My current cart is a Grado Gold. I am hopeful that upgrading to a new cartridge helps eliminate some of the treble harshness and provides a sweeter overall sound. I'm interested in the Dynavector 20x2 so far. Any other suggestions for 1K or under, Benz, Ortofon, Sumiko (Blackbird, a little over 1K, but what the hell)?

Thanks for you assistance!
davidlillis
Sorry to hear of your bad experience. John has always been great to deal with as far as my own experiences.
Listening to Harbeths in my NYC system. If you're interested send me a PM.

Jerry
BTW - the comment about metal dome tweeters being harsh is nonsense. The Harbeth SHL5 uses metal tweeters and the high end is gorgeous.
So you found a speaker with a metal dome teweeter that is not harsh. I'll bet you that there are far more speakers with metal domes that are considered "bright", "edgy" or "harsh" than are not.

BTW, the tweeter in the Harbeth is one of the few metal domes that is excellent. I believe it to be a Seas and it has been used succesively in some of the best speakers over the past twenty years. However if you look closely at it you will see that they use a clear "acoustic lens" on the back side of the grill to block the ringing that leads to a harsh high frequencies.