Always look at the cartridge' s compliance. Nowadays vinyl know- how is isolated at the desk of the manufacturer of very expensive items, whereas in the glorydays of vinyl, each reviewer had the courage to define the compliance of a cartridge. Very few modern vinylits now about the relation between eff mass and stylus compliance. The more expensive Shures models have relatively high compliances. As the arm of a thorens 165 mk1 has an eff. mass of 16 gr, those models are mechanically seen a bad match and will never deliver their own musical results in this situation. So is it a bad arm? No!
