Turntable Cartridge upgrade question.

+1 on the Darlington Labs.

I owned the Mani and went  to the Darlington Labs MP 7. 

Always felt it was a major upgrade from the Mani.

So much info guys I need to do my home work now, honestly now I'm dumber that I was before I started asking questions :)  Thank you all for input !

Why not put the ortofon 2m black lvb 250 stylus on your black? According to Fremer, it performs like a moving coil. A worthwhile upgrade. As others have asked, why would you cheap out on the phono stage? You should be spending at least a grand on that, if not more.

Ok guys so after all of your comments I believe I found my answer on my initial question : what would be step up to MC type cartridges in price range $1200 that would be way better than 2M Black ?.

The answer is: pretty much any good brand and quality MC outperforms good quality MM.

But the real answer is the fact that in my case changing just cartridge makes little or non noticeable improvement, I need new cartridge and new phono stage, but to add problems and expenses  I saddled on PASS XP 15 so now I debate of the PASS pre amps perhaps XP12  and ultimately replacing my Threshold S550e for PASS X250.8 , yes it will be expensive to do it right. Thank you all for input !

@ssg308 There is no rush to absorb the info of interest.

Copy/paste the valuable items, put the info into a email draft with a Title to describe the stored content.

Highlight the info to show the importance to yourself.

When better understood and more is wanted to be learned, it is then easy to extract and take the discussion further.

Additionally important, there is no need to rush into any decisions that you may feel are needed to be made.

Set the Journey up to be one that has good memories.