Phasemation cart on Technics

By the way, you seem to be conflating weight with compliance. At least the numbers you quote look like compliance data. But yes, for a low compliance cartridge, like yours seems to be, you want a tonearm with high ish effective mass ( not “weight”). Effective mass reflects the distribution of the mass of the tonearm, from counterweight to headshell/cartridge.

Thanks @lewm  and you are correct about my mistake. And yes, its dumb of me to be asking questions after a handful of hours but I guess I wonder if its the suspension or the tonearm (which is not a great fit).

I'll keep on keeping on.

As long as the tone arm effective mass and the cartridge compliance are not wildly mismatched, I personally tend not to worry about that issue too much. For one thing, we never can know the actual compliance of a given sample of the cartridge. All we know is what the manufacturer tells us is the compliance of an average sample. For another thing, we often are guessing at the effective mass of the tone arm. If you think your tone arm effective mass is too low, that is easily remedied by using a heavier headshell of which there are many good ones on the market. 

@lewm  great point and I guess I have never really thought about it.

@gochurchgo I’m not a cartridge guru, but I am using the Phasemation PP-500 on a Technics 1210G (stock arm) with a Phasemation CS-1200 headshell (13.7g) and Oyaide BR12 mat (5mm). I’m definitely enjoying what I’m hearing...

Also, I believe the low compliance you are quoting above was measured at 100Hz; Anamighty Sound measures the PP-500 at 14x10-6 at 10Hz, so medium compliance. The Phasemation/Technics stock arm combo is fairly common in Japan.