Griff..., Thanks -- been there and done that. I've owned the CA Virtuoso and Maestro. The Virtuoso is very very good, BUT the Maestro at MSRP of $1250 is noticeably better -- if you can believe it. I recall one reviewer said the Maestro was the best MM on the market today. The open question was whether it was worth spending twice as much on the Maestro as the Ortofon 2M Black???
Well . . . I've owned them all. I originally mounted the Virtuoso and Maestro on my rebuilt Thorens TD 160. I thought the Virtuoso and Maestro sounded just great. I decided to take the plunge into "serious" vinyl and sold the Thorens and bought a VPI Classic. The Classic is built like a tank. Problem is the da*n JMW uni-pivot is a PITA. None of the cartridges I mention above were compatible with the JMW arm, possibly because the JMW arm uses an unstabilized uni-pivot architecture.
I moved on to the Sound Smith VPI Zephyr which works well with the Classic/JMW set up.
This post is obviously about vintage MM and MI carties that withstood the test of time. Notwithstanding my troubles with the Classic/JMW set up, I surmise that the CA Virtuoso and Maestro, and Ortofon 2M Black will join the list of venerable cartridges too, if they haven't already done so.
Griff..., do you think the Virtusos with SS retip sounds better than a stock Virtuoso out of the box??
