Soundsmith - Thank you to everyone.

So many questions......so little time or room. First; my preamps. They are very high end designs, but we don’t make much $$ on them. Why, you may ask, do we make them. For the same reason that I do many things that don’t translate into money. It is for the music and my customers. In a way, I am glad it’s not too popular. I would start losing lots more on them. Fremer and Holmes BOTH got what I did when I designed them and in their reviews of the original Sussurro and MCP-2 said the same thing: "If you have X $ to spend, don’t split it on a cartridge and preamp, buy the Soundsmith Sussurro and MCP-2 - you will be far ahead of the game". I made our preamps high end but low cost them so folks COULD save $ and move up the food chain in our line of carts and get far more result. I listen to and demo the Hyperion with the MCP-2 ($1199) - which has compared favorably to preamps costing 4X as much. I also introduced continuously variable loading - on the fly - from 10 Ohms to 5K - so you can tune it by ear to what sounds good to you.

Now on the point of different cartridges for different music. MOST cartridges are not neutral. Neutrality however, is my design goal always, above everything, regardless of products I make - speakers, amplifiers, preamps, cartridges, etc..... . The technical. reasons for LACK of neutrality are many, but let me put it this way. If you were to take a Grace F9, and look at the "sine" wave produced, you would be shocked. It is NOT sinusoidal. How does it sound? Great. One must separate the wheat from the chaff.

When I was director of engineering at Bozak, Rudy Bozak taught me an important lesson regarding loudspeaker design. He said "There are 10 things you’d like to do when designing a loudspeaker - you’re only going to get to do 3 of them. You’d better pick the right things".

So linearity in and of itself is not the whole key to sonics, but does cause coloration when its bad. Many people don’t know HOW to listen to a cartridge. The same could be said for me in the sense of art - I LIKE art, and own some, but I don’t know how to look at it - NOT like an artist. A cartridge has it’s WORST moment when things get busy. That tells you about transient performance, and certain aspects of the design. So you have to look at the whole elephant. Good for riding through a riotous crowd, getting rid of excess peanuts, helping you wash your car, not good as an indoor pet. The Grace is like tube gear. If you do a harmonic distortion analysis on tube gear, you see LOTS of distortion. What kind? even order (2nd, 4th, 6th, etc....). Many solid state designs? ODD order. Even order is MUSICAL, and adds pleasant harmonics. Odd order? Horrible. Is a tube amp/preamp "accurate"?

No.Is it nice to have as a pet?Sure.

I am the last one to tell folks what to own - that they MUST own something "totally" accurate. I made an audio discovery 45 yeas ago of a device that puts you in an alpha state after 60 seconds of listening to music with it. It is "linear"? No. Does it make you smile? You bet. Will I ever bring it to market? No - I don’t have the resources. It, like over a hundred inventions I have, will go with me to the next world, IF they let me take any baggage. You know how airlines keep changing the rules.

Because I do what I do, and have the philosophy I do, I am compelled to yearn for truth and accuracy and to discover how to accomplish that. That requires years, much thought, experimentation, failure, intuition. Is extreme accuracy always the best? Hard to answer. In life, one often needs to find out what it’s NOT, before one can know what it is. Same for engineering. So what happens when you play a less than perfect record with a very accurate cartridge? Well, it’s the same as getting too close to a fallen goddess. You will be awash with imperfection. What happens if you were up front and close to her before she fell?~
It would take your breath away.~
Peter Ledermann

Peter, I'm the last person to accurately comment on accuracy Lol.

But before acquiring the Straingauge, I used to run a Transfiguration Temper Supreme, and then their Orpheus.

Compared to my more coloured carts...Roksan Shiraz, Zu Denon 103, Lyra Skala and Parnassus, I would have sworn the Transfigurations were the model of neutrality.

But not so, far from it.

So, w the SG, I now GENUINELY hear tonal discrimination and timbral accuracy that makes every lp sound different (no homogenizing or smearing going on) and voices and instruments sound genuine, authentic and familiar.

And the other areas that totally convince on the neutrality/realism thing is lifelike speed and bass impact.

So, I'm not a musician, or an audiophile who's heard everything. But I've devoted 22 years to this hobby, refining my sound away from euphonically coloured and twds accurate and musical. And my Straingauge cart is the one component along w my LT air tonearm that absolutely nails the accurate/musical balance. And that I believe follows from it's ability as a high resolution but even handed transducer.

And Peter, I need to get on w ordering those repl stylii, please contact me.

Above someone asked my about my family. My father and family was from Breslau, my mother from Frankfurt-am -Main. My father and his sister fled in 39; their parents escaped in 42 - a miracle. My paternal Grandfather - Georg Ledermann, was major industrialist. He was "protected" by "friends" - and although sent to a camp for 8 weeks in 1940, was "returned" home, starving, by means he never discovered. They nearly starved till 42, when by a miracle my father got them visas to Cuba. The US was NOT allowing refugees into the US by then, they were considered "enemy aliens" and were not allowed into the US - even though they were fleeing for their lives. They took a train from Breslau, to Barcelona, and before boarding the boat were stopped and "arrested" by German soldiers who asked them to produce passports. For those who are not aware, those passports were stamped "JEW" in red. A priest who was across the street came over and told the German he could not arrest them - did he not SEE the medal my grandmother was wearing? She wore a small gold chain with many tiny medals, each the size of a dime, that had belonged to her grandfather. ONE medal was the Isabella award, (Wikipedia) given to her grandfather by the king of Spain for his 30 yeas of service as German council. It meant, technically, that he, and ALL his descendants, were "honorary" Spanish citizens. He let them go. I have the award. They spend 14 months in Cuba, and when entering the US, were detained for days and shown maps of Breslau, to point out what was made in each factory - something my grandfather well knew. The US and British soon leveled Breslau to six feet of rubble. The rest of the Ledermann and Ehrlich families died in concentration camps.

My mother’s father was a general, and head legal council to the German army in WW1. By WWII, many of the military brass that has served under him - who were now Nazis - "protected" him, his wife and my mother till 42. He was a "war hero" and also a war criminal, as all German generals were after WW1. His name is on the treaty of Versailles. In 42, my mother was crying as she left a government office, and was grabbed by a Nazi who recognized her - he had served under her father. He helped arrange a bribe to a fellow in the Visa office, but they were discovered by another in that office who demanded that my grandfather "defend" his brother, a murderer of his own wife and daughter. Jews had been stripped of their right to practice law, medicine and more many years earlier, But in 1942, my grandfather, Adolphe Solomon, defended a murderer in a Frankfurt court. The judge didn’t have the guts to tell him - "I’m sorry Dr. Solomon, you are not allowed to practice law in this court". He won, or I would not be typing this that you are reading. He fled to England with wife and my mother. His son, Gerard, had fled in 39, missing the Nazis that came for him by 30 minutes. My uncle Gerard fled to Paris, where he designed/sold a folding boat that could be carried in two small briefcases. I often wondered why he did that. Then it hit me.

He realized that if/when the Nazis came to Paris, Jews could paddle across the channel to England. He moved to the US, married a Jew, and converted to Christianity. Changed his name to "Sandersen" and tried to pass himself off as a Swede. He knew there was a lot of antisemitism then in the US, and he was "done" being Jewish. Thank God there is no more antisemitism now here or anywhere. He lived in Aspen Colorado, - He was "Sandy, the silversmith. An artist, poet, inventor, silversmith, stained glass creator, painter, architect, musician, teacher and more. I loved him.

I knew three out of four grandparents. It should not have happened.

Peter Ledermann

I am Russian, never ever hear this name "Tallan" and never met anyone with this name in Russia.

Are you challenging me? Perhaps you are unaware that when immigrants with long names came through Ellis Island, the names were truncated and "Americanized" often not by the Federal officials as commonly believed but at the request of the immigrating family. 
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-smithsonian-did-ellis-island-officials-really-change-names-immigrants-180961544/
Regardless of how it came to be, one of my relatives did an exhaustive search and found that my family's original name was "Telushkin" and that we came from a village long ago decimated, the Village of Slutzk. 
https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/slutsk/slu-xi.html
Anything else Chakster?

Regardless of how it came to be, one of my relatives did an exhaustive search and found that my family’s original name was "Telushkin" and that we came from a village long ago decimated, the Village of Slutzk.

@fsonicsmith
So you passed KGB test. 
Telushkin is indeed Russian surename :) Sounds good.

Of course i don’t know how it works when immigrant came through Ellis Island, but i have jewish roots myself, my grand-grand mother’s surename was Cohen, she was a daughter of Rabbi in western Ukraine.