Still looking for a new Moving Coil Cartridge

crustycoot

Does anyone have experience with buying a headshell with pre-aligned cartridge?

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I could not ’trust’ a pre-alignment, I simply couldn’t do it.

Not to mention, personally getting it ’right’ is part of the enjoyment every time you drop the needle.

And, of course, the proliferation of TT with arms with fixed cartridges opens pandora’s box for so many.

I vote for acquiring a few inexpensive tools and learning how to get it ’right’. Sets you up for the rest of your life.

If you want to buy the Hana and are just looking for affirmation here, just buy the Hana. Divergent opinions from strangers whose audio systems and tastes you don’t know will likely continue to appear here for a few weeks. 

I have a Zu Denon DL103 that came with a turntable I bought.  It sounded awful and I was going to throw it away, but decided to send it to Andy Kim to see if he could bring it back to life.  Boy, did he ever! 

I have a Hana SL and it's a very nice cartridge, but the Zu has more detail and is more lively, if a little less "refined" than the Hana.  The Hana is a fine cartridge and would be different, but to my ears, not "better".  If you like a warmish to neutral sound and if the Zu is a bit too wild and wooly for you, the Hana might be a good choice. 

I suggest reaching out to Andy and see if there's a way to tailor the sound of the Zu more to your taste.  That would be the best "bang for the buck" option in my opinion.

Hana SL is very exciting cart to listen. I have also the ML which I love.For your needs the SL is the way to go.

OP

"I listen to 95% 60’s, 70’s and 80’s Rock and want whatever cartridge I purchase to make the records sound good without excessive surface noise."

Where are you getting the LP’s?

I had a LOT of LP’s, bought in 60’s; 70’s, 80’s. Then along came CDs. LPs gathered dust, friends gave me their used LPs ... I had about 2500 lps, some new, then I inherited 4,000, mostly Jazz played once.

When I started playing my old ones again, OMG, noisy, nearly unlistenable.

I developed my manual scrub routine, and was/am very happily surprised, they play much much quieter than when dirty. Night and Day difference.

You need to get aggressive with them, dirt has been pushed down into the grooves, and modern stylus get deeper in the grooves, digging junk out if you don’t get it out.

I mean SCRUB!

What I mean to say, no new cartridge will make them as quiet as you hope, but aggressive cleaning will help a lot, with any cartridge.