Hi. This may or may not help you, but here goes. I used to have a Talisman Alchemist III S cartridge. It was a high output moving coil. I used it on a Systemdek IIX turntable with the stock Profile tonearm and I loved it! It was a fantastic sounding cartridge and I was very happy with it's performance. Like the Systemdek turntable, the Talisman cartridge performed way beyond it's price point.
I also had several friends that were using the same cartridge on various tables and they all loved it as well. It sounded a little bit brittle when it was brand new, but it didn't take long at all for it to break in and when it did it was really sweet. This was years ago before Sumiko bought out the Talisman lineup. While I cannot speak directly to the Talisman II by Sumiko that you refer to, I can tell you that the old Talisman high output coil cartridge was definitely a keeper in my opinion. I don't know the vintage of the model that you refer to or what it's output is, but if I recall correctly when Sumiko bought out Talisman, they discontinued the Talisman lineup and Sumiko's Blue Point cartridge was supposed to be the comparable replacement. Me and my audio friends at the time felt that the Talisman III S was better sounding than the replacement Sumiko product.
Your question about whether the Talisman II by Sumiko is a keeper or not I can't really answer for you. What I can say is that in my opinion based on my experience with the older Talisman product, you may very well have a keeper on your hands.
I'll be interested to see whether you hear from any others that have experience with the Talisman cartidge. I loved mine and was very sorry when I let it go. I was unable to find another new one later on when I was setting up another turntable, and other cartridges with similar specs at a similar price point never seemed to stack up to the Talisman.
