Recommendation for MM cartridge to fit Linn Ittok LVII arm that will outperform Adikt
The Clearaudio Charisma V2 is a very good cartridge with excellent tracking and a compliance that should work well with the Ittok. I have never been crazy about Linn cartridges. Clearaudio's build quality is as good as it gets. There are also the high output Grados. Very musical. Again excellent tracking and a good match for the Ittok. |
+1 looscannon. I'm impressed with the clearaudio cartridges. FWIW there are a lot of great older MM out there. Grado has been mentioned already (the signatures are very good) but both the empire "Z" & "4000" have been on my table and are also very good. Chakster should chime in at some point. He has a lot of experience with MM's. |
Few cartridges within $750 budget (or lower) that killing nearly all those modern MM are: *Victor X-1IIe with titanium pipe cantilever and nude elliptical tip *Stanton SC-100 WOS with sapphire coated cantilever and Stereohedron II stylus tip *Pickering XSV/4000 with aluminum cantilever and Stereohedron tip P.S. My personal favorite is signature model of the Walter O. Stanton (WOS) CS-100. Its Stereohedron II profile is simply amazing and can be used for over 1000 hrs. For higher budget there are Grace LEVEL II, F14, AT-ML180 ... |
@chakster - your recommendations are interesting. I have decided to stick with my Linn K9 cartridge/ Linn Ittok LVll moving magnet combo for right now. You see, yesterday I finally made an executive decision about how to move forward with my upgrades. I needed to decide about the Linn Karousel bearing promotion that was ending on 6/30. In order to get the Karousel bearing for "free" I had to commit to purchase (order placed) $4,000 USD in Linn products. I elected to put all of the $$ into the power supply and I ordered the "Akurate" level of "Radikal" DC motor and power supply. These Linn naming conventions are bizarre but Oh well.... But I have been listening to the K9 cartridge through my Bryston MM phono stage and it sounds really good. No reason to mess with success right now. I will have to fully audition the difference that the Karousel bearing and the Radikal power supply make on the sound quality of the LP12 Sondek. By the way, I decided also to purchase the Greenstreet Audio aluminum subchassis (Keel copy) in order to hopefully get the most out of the Karousel bearing upgrade without having to pay the exorbitant cost of the Keel subchassis. So changing cartridges does not appear to be necessary at this point. I will re-visit that option after all these exciting changes are implemented. |
Thanks @daveyf You asked earlier about the ground wire and if it was attached to the grounding lug on the phono stage - yes it is. Funny observation about the hum that I am hearing. It will disappear or not be present at times. Other times it will start out silent and slowly build to the point where, at the end of one side of an album it will be quite audible. Last night I listened to several albums and I really did not hear the hum. |
@masi61 Seems like the hum issue could be a cartridge issue. As the cartridge gets closer to the spindle, it may be picking up a grounding issue from that. I remember hearing years ago about such a problem, if I remember correctly the problem went away with a) better turntable/arm grounding and/or b) a better shielded cartridge. |
