Warm sounding phono cartridge

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.   

Changing cartridges can be a very expensive exercise and you may never find one that completely mollifies ticks/pops. Keep your current cartridge and look into buying a Sweet Vinyl tick/pop remover. You'll never look back on the purchase and you will enjoy noise free vinyl

I have 31,300 LPs of all ages.  I used Dynavector cartridges most of my life.  I went from a worn out Benz Ruby III to a "lowly" $1100 Dynavector 20X2 Low.  Well, maybe it's not the bee's knees but it makes both my mono and stereo records sound fabulous into my EAR 864, 912 and now using a 324.  I also used an Allesso SUT with another custom pre-amp.  When adjusted for impedance and gain, they all sounded outstanding.  Noise was a concern with worn or poor quality vinyl but did not overwhelm the music 95% of the time.  My great vinyl LPs, including nearly all my mint Japanese pressings sound as if they were quiet as a digital source.  My analog front end isn't SOTA with a VPI VI/Brooks Berdan highly modified SME IV and GroverHuffman phono cabling into an EAR 324.  The resultant sound and low /oor no noise into a near SOTA rest of the system is fabulous.  I was looking into the Sweet Vinyl products and they probably do the job of removing ticks and pops but I'm finding that a really flat frequency response in a cartridge is a big benefit.  I do not like rising high end Ortofons or the typical older Lyra cartridges I've heard.  I prefer a Koetsu to those brands.  If you want a really great cartridge for a big collection with noisier LPs, go with a Dynavector 20.  Please note that I clean records using just distilled water in a Kirmuss ultrasonic cleaner and dried with a 43 yyear old upgraded VPI 16.5 vacuum record cleaner.  No harm done except when an LP has imbedded dirt removed from a defect/wear and exposes it.  It happens occasionally with well used LPs but it also reveals more musical/sonic information.  

I have about 3000 LPs, but I don’t really know exactly. For you to be able to quote a number like 31300, which suggests you actually count them is impressive. The vast majority of my LPs have no or very tolerable surface noise. If not, and if cleaning doesn’t help (VPI HW17), out they go. I’ve never felt the need for the Sweet thing.