Thinking about switching cartridges.

Lyra Delos is a giant killer at its price.  

@avanti1960 for another goal ! Lyra Delos is a truth teller , especially for the $

Agree that the Delos is a very good performer.  But that table will mask that performance and add coloration.  

@rauliruegas I never said you can not replace just the stylus tip of some cartridges. Some manufacturers like Soundsmith mount the stylus themselves. I also think the RP 10 is a great table and arm as long as you put it on an isolation platform. It seems no matter what I say you make hash out of it. There are always exceptions to every generalization.  

@tomic601 I said the Red is a fine cartridge. As I have noted before I do not like the cheaper Hanas below the Blue. In that price range I think people are better off with high output cartridges and phono stages. You get a much better signal to noise ratio. It does not matter how good a cartridge performs if you have a lot of hiss behind it. Of course there is a lot more to cartridge performance than the stylus, I never said there was not. 

The precious part of any analog set up is the record. Noisy, worn out records suck. Well shaped and polished diamonds cause less record wear. The better a cartridge tracks the less likely it is to cause record wear. IMHO 60 um is unacceptable. When a stylus leaves the groove and bounces back and forth it permanently damages the groove. Can a cartridge with a spec of 60 um track most records? Yes, but a cartridge with a spec of 80 um follows the groove better which means less record wear even if the 60 um cartridge is not miss-tracking.

The Delos is a fine cartridge, but at that price point I prefer the Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC. It has better support and rebuild is much less expensive.

Dear @mijostyn : " I never said you can not replace just the stylus tip of some cartridges.. "

? ? ? ? ? from where came your statement, seems you have a misunderstood because that is not the subjects of my post to you. What’s going on ? ? ? ?

What I posted about Hana, Etsuro and my cartridge was only for you can understandthat Excel is EXCEL and made and makes several OM top today cartridges that audiophiles as you not even knew/know. My cartridge ruby top plate is part of that quality know/how level by Excel, the measured of my cartridge in the chart says that output levels in both channels are exACTLY THE SAME: 0.211MV AND fr FLAT FROM 20HZ TO 20KHZ.

In the other side all what you said about stylus tip " special " polished and the like is only a myth that I believed like 10 years ago for several years and my post confirm that is just false because the Ogura stylus tip in the Fulton cartridge that Joseph Long fix it for less than ( not 300.00, error. ) 200.00 is exactly the same as your over 7K-8K MSL stylus tip. That's why I posted.

R

R.