Tonearm for Cartridge Upgrade Path


Hi. Can you suggest some tonearms that would fluidly accommodate this particular upgrade path for cartridges?

Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood MM -> Denon or Zu DL103 -> Miyabi 47, Koetsu Rosewood, or Shelter 90X

I was thinking about Origin Live models or SMEs. But please feel free to suggest other models I should look into. Thank you.
selfdivider

Showing 1 response by dougdeacon

The Denon and (especially) Koetsu MC's are low compliance types that need a higher mass, stable arm to play their best. The Clearaudio MM is a high compliance cartridge that will play best on a lower mass arm. IOW, the arm that works best for the MM won't be the arm that works best for most of your LOMC choices.

Which way you should go is up to you, but if you plan on using the MM and the MC on the same arm, you'll have to compromise one way or the other.

My choice would be to optimize the arm for the more expensive cartridge. It seems to me there's little point spending $2-4K for a cartridge if you're not going to get the most out of it. If the less costly MM doesn't play quite up to its best, oh well...