Advice needed on MC cartridges

I, too, had a Hana SL moving-coil cartridge mounted on a JMW 10" Memorial Tonearm on a VPI TNT 3.5 turntable.  It was superb but one channel failed open after a bit more than one year.  Before that a Clearaudio Stradivari v2 lasted six years in the same tonearm/turntable and was still OK when I traded it.  Despite the Hana SL problem, I replaced it with the somewhat more expensive Hana ML cartridge, which is still going strong after three years.

The sound of the SL and ML was excellent.  In fact, the Sound of both was, to my ears, noticeably better than the $3,750 Clearaudio Strdivari, v2.

Op. On my Frog. Previous cartridges… it has been a while, early on I had a Shure V15, Audio Techniques (?) a couple in the $500 - $750 price range.

The difference… like night and day. Surface noice vanished… wasn’t just a little reduced, vanished. Most ticks and pops vanished… or were so reduced they became negligible ( I attribute this to the stylist going much deeper into the grooves). The soundstage widened and depth increased. Amount of detail increased… the bass went up radically. I had my old ~ $750cartridge on my new VPI TT for about a week. I remember particularly the bass improved with the new table… but much of the substantive improvement came from the cartridge.

Normanthagard, thank you for the recommendation on the Hanas cartridges.

Ghdprentice, Thank you for describing in what ways the Van den Hull Frog (MC) improved your system’s sound quality. Interesting how your record surface noise was so reduced. That’s always been an issue for me. Years ago I tried solutions like Carvers Phase Linear Autocorrelator and Burwens Transient Noise Eliminator, but never considered a better designed needle and cartridge could help in that regard..

Mike

👍 A really high end cartridge is a thing of beauty. It was truly a jaw dropping moment of how good a turntable could be. I just thought surface noise and pops were something you had to endure… then they just disappeared.

I now have a high-end Linn with a much better cartridge (better… but the biggest gain was getting out of the sub $1k range to the Frog). Just for fun I recently played some albums really loud… I just couldn’t believe how quiet the background was.

In choosing a cartridge the thing to do is to choose one who’s description matches your desires. If you want etched detail at any cost you will pay the price in scooping up unnecessary noise. The Frog is a beautiful, detailed and natural sounding cartridge… I enjoyed it very much.

Skyscraper: I had a similar experience with the High Output Moving Coil Sumiko ‘Songbird’ cartridge, moving from what appears to have been a worn-out Stanton 500-II moving magnet cartridge. I also changed phono stages at the same time, but I’m pretty sure the improvement came from the cartridge. With a decent LO, neither 44year old son or myself could tell the difference between Peggy Lee on a CD and Peggy Lee at Basin Street East on an LP. For lack of experience, I couldn’t tell you how a Song Bird compares to an Ortophon Black (which I had [and still am] considering for my second system), but I can testify that a cartridge ‘upgrade’ is certainly worth the money. I have heard A-B comparisons between Moving Coil and Moving Magnet on YouTube; the MC was certainly brighter and ‘faster,’ but the MM was more mellow. If you have two tone arms, two turntables, or replaceable head shells, you could have the best of both worlds. Good luck on your journey toward High Fidelity nirvana— the perfect system! (I speak tongue-in-cheek) 🙂