What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?


I believe that a cartridge and a speaker, by far, contribute the most to SQ.

The two transducers in a system.

I bit the bulllet and bought a Lyra Atlas SL for $13K for my Woodsong Garrard 301 with Triplanar SE arm. I use a full function Atma-Sphere MP-1 preamp. My $60K front end. It is certainly, by far, the best I have owned. I read so many comments exclaiming that Lyra as among the best. I had to wait 6 months to get it. But the improvement over my excellent $3K Mayijima Shilabi was spectacular-putting it mildly.

I recently heard a demo of much more pricy system using a $25K cartridge. Seemed to be the most expensive cartridge made. Don’t recall the name.

For sure, the amount of detail was something I never heard. To hear a timpani sound like the real thing was incredible. And so much more! 
This got me thinking of what could be possible with a different kind of cartridge than a moving coil. That is, a moving iron.

I have heard so much about the late Decca London Reference. A MI and a very different take from a MC. Could it be better? The World’s Best? No longer made.

However Grado has been making MI cartridges for decades. Even though they hold the patent for the MC. Recently, Grado came out with their assault on “The World’s Best”. At least their best effort. At $12K the Epoch 3. I bought one and have been using it now for about two weeks replacing my Lyra. There is no question that the Atlas SL is a fabulous cartridge. But the Epoch is even better. Overall, it’s SQ is the closest to real I have heard. To begin, putting the stylus down on the run in grove there is dead silence. As well as the groves between cuts. This silence is indicative of the purity of the music content. Everything I have read about it is true. IME, the comment of one reviewer, “The World’s Best”, may be true.
 

 

mglik

Showing 8 responses by noromance

@dogberry The corollary is that perhaps I prefer it tail up to compensate for my declining perception of highs! Try your cartridges at 1.65. IIRC, John Wright told me tracking lies between 1.6 and 2.0 grms—so you're safe. More air, detail, and speed without sacrificing bass.

Maybe I can’t hear the missing highs any more

Sorry, I need to correct my senility-infused confusion. Should read "tail slightly up." Much better highs and leading edge snap.

I find the Deccas sing at 1.65 grams, tail slightly down.

@mijostyn Indeed. All good. I find the Deccas sing at 1.65 grams, tail slightly down. When we were in our teens, we played rock and roll on an ancient Garrard with a ceramic cartridge which did in fact track wonderfully at 10 grams. The non-magnetic penny providing the necessary mass.

@mijostyn That's fine by me. But do you really think I'm going to sit there and listen to 4 mistracking cartridges for 35 years? I will admit that I had one in a LP12/Ittok back in the 80s and it did mistrack. Perhaps your impression comes from that sort of mismatch. It's easy to carry a misconception based on legacy intel. However, I do not have that issue now and the speed, realism, and clarity of these cartridges can be breath-taking.

@mijostyn Where did you get this info from? I’ve 4 Decca cartridges and they are incredibly robust in that there’s no cantilever to get destroyed in an accident. They all track splendidly although they can be susceptible to noise from unclean vinyl.
+1 ​@dogberry 

"The Decca London Reference is an awful cartridge. It is a terrible tracker and very unreliable."

@mijostyn I heard demos of the Sweetwater units with the designers and while they are excellent units, you could absolutely hear the cleaned version’s veil over the original.

A computer can entirely remove the "pop" from a scratch and fill it in with a small section of the previous several milliseconds and you can not hear where the defect was.

Fan of Decca cartridges here. If you’ve the budget, it may be worth trying a Reference (or Jubilee) if you can get one. However, I was reading about Durand arms and the writer said the one he had trashed his Triplaner. So, you might explore that area.