Cartridge Opinions - Sorry

Dear chakster, your skeptical attitude against retips is curious.
First thing is the fact that no manufacturer use their own cantilevers
and styli. Those are produced by big Japanese jewel companies. 
The same apply for repair services. That is to say that retipers
use the same cantiler/styli combos. This part is then glued in the
so called ''joint pipe''. The aluminum part in which cantilever is
glued on which coils are fastened and in which tension wire is
fastened. Together those are moving parts by which one try 
to reduce the moving mass.  Preferably by reducing the coil
wire. To glue the cantilever/stylus combo in the joint pipe is
not ''rocket science''. Why should whatever manufacturer do this
better than an experienced retipper? 

There are a great sounding cartridges mentioned in the thread, but the price/performance of the Hana line is tough to beat.  That’s why they sell so many of them while garnishing many positive reviews.  The Hana assembly line is shared by far more expensive cartridges - seasoned experience and expertise.  

The idea behind the Hana is to use the knowledge/experience of well seasoned high-end cartridge engineers, coupled with quality ready available parts to keep costs down.  This recipe has been a huge success.

You can end all the threads mentioning 4 cartridges:

Denon 103 (MC)
Hana (MC)
Nagaoka (MM)
Audio-Technica (MM)

All of them are relatively cheap, affordable, not all of them are universal for all tonearms: Denon has the lowest compliance of them all and was designd in the ’60s, Nagaoka has pretty low compliance for MM, Audio-Technica are mid compliance MM. Hana is just one of the cartridges Excel Sound made, they have been making cartridges since the ’70s for many other manufacturers, but it wasn’s something special. Well what do you expect from a $400 cartridges?

The world of great inexpensive cartridges consist of so many different models from too many different manufacturers, but the knowledge and personal experience with different cartridges is so limited that we have always discuss the same models again and again.

It’s too bad. I wish people could inform each other about new discoveries, not just mainstream models from any online recordshop based on receit review chart.

Dear @kennyc :  "  I fail to understand the purpose of ranking components by value. I see often contentio.......... ""

Well that's you because other of us think different. The first post about was:

"  The big deal you're going to find is that if the tonearm properly tracks the cartridge, then the choice of cartridge is far less important than people make it out. "

followed by this other post from the same person:

" I discovered that the arm is more important when ".....


You said:

""  I also surmise that few check the accuracy of stylus to cantilever mating.  ""

I posted in the first page:

"  Every audiophile knows the importance to match the cartridge/tonearm combination and to make an accurated geometry alignment.  Now, we can have a great cartridge mounted in a great tonearm and even can't shows at its best if the TT/cartridge/tonearm overall alignment/geometry set up is not made it accurately "

I can add that almost everyone knows that it's the cantilever/stylus the ones that be align in the protractor.

These info comes from a tonearm manufacturer:


"""  Our Opinion on Component SignificanceComponentPerformance SignificanceTurntable 23%
Tonearm 17%  Cartridge5%  Phono Stage 25%   15% Amplifiers
15%Speakers   """


Your post about looks useless but is your opinion and I respect it.

R.