Van Den Hul what is the best cart ?

I have 2 Colibris, one copper coil, another platinum coil, both with the plastic bodies. My experience mirrored many of the comments in this thread.

Sound. The Colibri sounds very fast and airy, it has the best treble of all the cartridges that I have tried in my system. However, the bass and mid-bass is on the lean side. If I understand correctly, VDH used the SME V as the reference tonearm when he designed the Colibri. While I have never tried this combo myself, I believe it has the synergy.

Reliability. I have to agree the Colibri is more fragile than most cartridges. I have sent mine back for repair a couple of times. The interesting thing is that it came back with a different length cantilever everytime! I have seen at least 3 different cantilever lengths. The shortest one was so short that the cartridge bottom was no more than 1mm (IIRC) from the LP surface.

Output. My platinum coil Colibri is listed as 0.25mv from the factory, but with the same gain and volume setting, the volume is much lower than a Denon 103R, which lead me to believe its output is probably closer to (or lower than) 0.2mv than 0.25mv.

I went from a Benz LPS to an Ortofon Winfield

Hi Stringreen, I also went from the Colibri to the Ortofon A90. While I prefer the A90 overall, I still miss the treble of the Colibri. I have recently acquired the A95, but not yet have time to set it up.