I believe it goes both ways. I have tried cartridges on my turntable that range in price from a few dollars, like $10-12 on eBay, to $10,000. What I noticed is that some really inexpensive cartridges which sound great on a lesser turntable might sound awful on a good turntable that sells at the high-end of the market. The ADC TRX series of cartridges come to mind. On an inexpensive turntable, say around a few hundred dollars, they sound pretty good, but on a turntable where manufacturing cost is no object they are overly bright, harsh and strident. You would not stay in the room through a single track. On the otherhand, the Technics 205C-IIX, a moving magnet cartridge that I bought NOS for $200, stands tall among moving coils that cost thousands, at least on my turntable. That cartridge sounded not bad, but average on an inexpensive turntable. I could give you a lot of examples, but I have the suspicion that when better equipment is involved the turntable, the tonearm, the phonostage and the wire come into play in a very big way that you don't see in most environments where more commonplace setups are found. I would even go as far as to say listening for these differences can be an indicator of sorts to determine the quality of a better turntable because such a turntable should be musical and revealing enough to blatantly show the weaknesses or the strengths of a given cartridge.
So, my take is that it is a case where you mileage will most certainly vary, rather than may vary.
Win
Saskia Turntables
