Cartridge upgrade for vintage TT - MM or MC?

@elangley01,

You can learn a lot from guys here on agon like, millercarbon, chakster and rauliruegas. They have posted so much helpful information, tips, product data, etc, that it may help if you google your question and do your research there first, you will be surprised with how good and straight forward the many responses you will get from those same fellows. Sometimes it gets a little tedious for them and us to write the same thing over and over.

For example here are a few simple turntable upgrades I learned from rauliruegas:

@bstatmeister,
Sorry for coming to the party so late. I really have come to enjoy my Shure V15VxMR MM cartridge with the JICO SAS VN5xMR stylus and I wanted to share this with you. And you must read Raul’s thread.

I tricked out a $70 ’antique shop’ Technics SL-D2 direct drive turntable and a $200 Pioneer PL-600 direct drive turntable (the silver one) and upgraded the headshells with Ortofon LW-800S and LW-7N headshell wires, rewired the tonearm with KAB SuperFlex and Cardas tonearm wires, upgraded the cartridge and stylus with the Shure V15VxMR cartridge and the JICO SAS VN5xMR stylus. (That I switch out) And hardwired the phono interconnects with the very inexpensive but value added Blue Jeans Cable LC-1’s with the preamp output interconnects being Blue Jeans Cable LC-1’s also.

As far as playing ’albums’ I believe the best upgrade I made from a pure sound standpoint was adding a Parks Audio Budgie Tube Phono preamplifier at $399 with a pair of NOS Telefunken E88CC/6922’s at $454 after selling my $1748 Pro-Ject Phono Box RS MM/MC and the companion Pro-Ject battery powered Power Box RS power supply that I fortunately sold for a little above cost.

After adding the Parks Audio Budgie Tube Phono preamplifier I was amazed at the transparency, depth, wide soundstage, and dynamic range of sound. The Parks Audio Budgie Tube Phono preamplifier is a single ended Class A tube circuit. See the reviews.

Now I’m on the hunt for the ’mysterious’ Shure Ultra 500 cartridge.

Ahh...The dreaded disease of ’upgraditis’.

I hope my post here helps you out some.

Please see here:

https://hometheaterreview.com/shure-v15-phono-cartridge-reviewed/
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-shure-v15vxmr-revisited-what-a-great-phono-cartridge.38495...

tyray

And since you mentioned your Schiit Mani phono preamp, I’ve since upgraded my phone interconnect cable with shielded and unshielded Duelund 20GA wire with KLEI™Absolute Harmony Plugs, speaker wire with Duelund 12GA and phono mat with GEM Dandy rubber cork compound mat.

I’m a Technics direct drive turntable guy too and I’m waiting for them to get rid of the internal phono preamp in the new Technics SL-1500C turntable and put those resources somewhere else on that deck.

The digging for the right information and applying it is the fun stuff. It just takes some time to digest all this ’stuff’.

So here’s something interesting. In my search for new TTs in the same price range I came across some good reviews of the Fluance reference series.

The RT82 ships with the Otofon OM 10 and lists the following specs:
Tonearm effective weight: 28.2g
Headshell weight: 10g
Cartridge weight: 5g
Cartridge compliance: 20

Just for giggles I put these into a resonant frequency calculator and got 5.4 (!)

That can’t be right, can it? Am I missing something? ...

... What about something like the AT VM540ML?

I was also looking at the Grado Silver/Gold or the Otofon 2M blue in the same price range.

You have to calculate your tonearm/cartridge resonance frequency with actual Test Record, buy Hi-Fi Test LP for it. It is also depends on suspension condition if the cartridge is not new.

You must know a cartridge dynamic compliance measured at 10Hz (not at 100Hz). If you see 100Hz in the manual simply convert it to 10Hz by multiplying on 1.7

More about tonearm/cartridge resonance here.

The "WOW" factor of the cartridge in your system pretty much depends on Stylus Profile and Cantilever Material. If you want extended frequency response, less record wear, long stylus life span and overall better quality you need something line MicroLine and Beryllium cantilever (not available for any new AT model), this is exactly what you can have with Audio-Technica AT-ML150 OCC for very reasonable price. For example the AT-ML170 is absolutely mind blowing cartridge and AT-ML180 is simply amazing but very expensive and impossible to find. There are many reasons why the AT-ML150 OCC is better than AT VM540ML, but one of the main reasons is Beryllium cantilever, Ceramic Base and OCC coild wire and OCC terminal pins. Actually the AT-ML150 OCC was in production and in stock in the shops until the 90’s, even after production of Beryllium was restricted by ecologists. I think the AT-ML150 OCC can be found for $350-450 depends on condition, i bought at least 3 of them over the years, then upgraded to 170 and 180.

@ roberjerman What do you make of this review of the Grado Gold? I notice he didn't review the Silver2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Wl6PUtBho

Please ignore or take with a grain of salt what Roberjerman says about the inductance of MM cartridges. True, the inductance of a typical MM is 1000 to 10,000 times that of a typical MC, but that is not the sole determinant of HF response. If it were, MM cartridges wouldn’t work at all. And MCs have their own issues with HF. His logic is flawed. The better MM cartridges more than hold their own with MCs in bandwidth and musicality. I also tend to agree with Raul that for your needs one of the new AT or Ortofon cartridges he mentioned would be a good choice.

Understood. 

Yeah I like what I've read about both the AT and Orotfons in that price range.  I also saw an excellent review of the Nagaoko MP-150 which I think would also meet my needs although I saw something else that said it's worth it to just get the MP-200 which is out of my range at the moment.