I recently listened to an older SP 10 MKII with a Jelco and Older SME arm with Koetsu and Stanton cartridges.
Why these arms ? SP-10mkII is great turntable, but it must be 10.5 or 12 inch tonearms, at least you have to hear Technics EPA series (the best ois EPA-100 mkII) on it with some MM carts. The problem with new Technics SL1200 series is that you can not use most of the 10.5 or 12 tonearms on it.
I recently purchased a Pickering ESV 3000 MM cartridge that arrived in the mail yesterday and I had to ask myself, "what am I doing?"
Do you like it? How much ytou paid if its not a secret ? If you like the sound i’m sure Stanton SC-100 WOS will blown you away compared to Pickering, but for a low budget under 350 usd Pickering XSV3000 is great. Try to load your stanton at 100k Ohm instead of 47k Ohm.
@cleeds
But buying a used pickup arm or phono cartridge is something I’d never consider
You must a be a rich guy if you’re buyin’ new cartridges everytime you want to experiment with different cart or tonearm. If you never tried vintage carts or arms then your experience is very limited. But i believe you may tried them long time ago if you were active back in the 80s ? Anyway even for people like you sellers offering a NOS vintage goods, never used. At the same time ebay buyers protection is always on the buyers side and return for a full refund including shipping is not a problem if a buyer is not happy about used goods for whatever reason.
The fascination comes when a used vintage $1000 cartridge is better than new $5000 cartridge, same about turntables and tonearms. Personally i want to try 5 different vintage carts for $1k each instead of one new cart for $5k. Experience is much more inportant if you know what you're buyin' used and why (imo).