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suggestions on MM to MC upgrade

Current setting is Linn LP12 (pre-cirkus, valhalla) + Ittok LVII + Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood + Lehmann black cube, sounds wonderful - may be a bit on the rich side, but it sounds great to me, plus Virtuoso seems to track on anything. I am thinking to go to MC route and already obtained a Linto from the bay. However, I am bit concern how much should I spend on the MC cart so that it won't be just a lateral move. Here are the list of a few carts that I am looking at:

Audio Technica OC9
Audio Technica AT33PTG / EV
Ortofon Kontrapunkt
Ortofon Jubilee
Ortofon Cadenza
Clearaudio Concerto

The price range is pretty wide, and I don't know too much about other carts anyway - in fact, among the list the only one I listend to personally is ATOC9. Any suggestion is much appreciated.
gxleetw

Showing 3 responses by rauliruegas

rauliruegas
13,129 posts
 
Dear Gxleetw: +++++ " suggestions on MM to MC upgrade " +++++

Certainly you have several roads to achieve a real upgrade for what today is the quality performance on your analog rig, not only with a cartridge change but even with a different tonearm or better phono stage.

But if you choose to go for a cartridge you can improve what you have staying with the MM/MI alternative with cartridges like:
Ortofon M20FL Super, Nagaoka MP-50, Ortofon M20E Super, Garrot P-77i, Grace F-9E etc, etc.
These unexpensive cartridges IMHO even or beats any of those MC cartridges ( btw, I agree with all those post here and I'm not trying to degrade those opinions. ) but the Concerto that I never had the opportunity to hear it.
IMHO if you want to go on the MC road and want to even or beat any of the cartrridges I name here you need to go higher on the LOMC alternative: ZYX Universe, Dynavector XV-1s, Ortofon A-90, etc, etc but these excellent LOMC cartridges needs to be mated to an excellent phono stage too.

Maybe if you tell in specific what are looking for to improve or what are your targets on quality performance be more easy to help you.

because you say: ++++++ " sounds wonderful - may be a bit on the rich side, but it sounds great to me " +++++, so you are really satisfied, many us maybe can't say: " my system sounds wonderful "!!!!!!!

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.
rauliruegas
13,129 posts
 
Dear Gxleetw see your point. I only posted that because it is not easy to achieve a " wonderful " sound ( of course that there are different quality levels of " wonderful ". ) and this could means that some way or the other you have Synergy on your system and this is a critical and very important characteristics that everyone is looking for.
Sometimes adding a " better " audio item could broke that Synergy so be very careful on your system changes.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.
rauliruegas
13,129 posts
 
Dear Danielvrandeburg: Good that you like it, very fine quality performance.

You need to loadd as best in your own system and remember that different capacitance values makes a difference too so you have " play " with capacitance too.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.
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