Warm sounding phono cartridge


Hello all.  I recently upgraded the phono cartridge on my Marantz TT15S1 from the Clearaudio cartridge that came with the table to a Hana Umami Blue.  I'm overall happy with the purchase.  However, while the Hana has made my well cared for and well recorded LP's sound excellent many of my albums now sound thin to me and noisy. Clicks and pops have been exacerbated to the point that I do not want to play some records even after a run through my Degritter ultrasonic.

I'm looking for a phono cartridge MM, MC or MI in the $1,000 range or less that is warm sounding and less revealing than the Hana.  Any thoughts?  

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Showing 1 response by orileyphoto

I don't know about the warmth of the cartridges I use, but I will say that I was using an Orfoton Black MM Cartridge on my VPI Scout and it picked up every single detail of an album.  This was wonderful on great recordings (almost all of my collection is vintage vinyl) but on a bad on recording it could be painful and sound thin.

When my stylus broke on the Black, I purchased an Orfoton Bronze stylus as a replacement.  It was about $400 less and I thought I would just try it.  

The result was I still got great sound and the stylus picked up very little of the noise that the Black revealed, and I could say it was somewhat warmer.  On the other hand, the stylus, didn't pick up all of the amazing detail of the Black.

The best and most obvious example of this was playing my vintage Ben Webster recording called Soulville.  The Black cartridge revealed every breath he took in a spectacular way.  The Bronze sounded great, but the detail, the breathing, and the soul kind of disappeared.