Cartridge Opinions - Sorry
the Denon 103 is a pretty nice cartridge for the money. Its not perfect but it does many things very well sounding very natural on the right tonearm. There are many MM cartridge for nearly the same price with much better overall sound quality of any tonearm. The price of Denon is not the end, because there must be a SUT or MC phono stage to handle LOMC and super heavy tonearm. So the actual price is Denon + SUT or MC Phono. In this combination it is not cheap at all. |
As for my opinion on this subject, the differences between most well made cartridges are relative to the flowery descriptions I see, minor. The most obvious is output and dynamic range. Next is tonal balance. Some cartridges lean a little bright others a little bass heavy. Ralph is right. As long as a cartridge is tracking everything you throw at it, any preference is personal. MC cartridges in particular are vastly over priced and many do not represent a good value. Take a look at the Nagaoka MP500. Here is a cartridge for $800.00 with a fine line stylus, a boron cantilever and great reviews. I would bet it is a better rock and roll cartridge than most MCs. Soundsmith and Grado both make excellent reasonably price cartridges. The Kiseki Purple Heart is just as good as cartridges costing $10K Price is absolutely no indication of quality when it comes down to MC cartridges once you get to a certain level of quality. The Ortofon Quintet Black S, the Clearaudio Essence and the Van Den Hull DDT-2 are excellent examples of cartridges using the best modern tech and materials at reasonable prices. After this it becomes purely a matter of taste, ego and tonearms. We have some fabulous tonearms on the market now but that is another subject. |
Dear @mijostyn : he did not but I do. Here you can read the M.Fremer review with the Allaerts cartridge I lended to him for that review: https://www.stereophile.com/phonocartridges/507allaerts/index.html and guess what? here is mounted in my SME IV and in " nude body " fashion did it by my self: https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/3080#&gid=1&pid=6 now I own the F1 as you can read in my system information. R. |
Btw, @mijostyn : that guess what? came because the Allaerts was mounted in the SME series models that you and your expert tonearm friend degraded in the tonearm/other thread. Here from my virtual system: https://ucarecdn.audiogon.com/82eb629a-abc2-4fab-881a-7dcd95a12dbc/-/autorotate/yes/ There were mounted: the Colibri, Koetsu RSP, Ortofon MC 7500 and the Allaerts in great tonearms,. R. |
