Recommend an MC cartridge

Amazing that individuals are willing to Spend substantial monies on a Cart' that seemingly has a very high risk of not being optimised as a design from the outset.

Even more amazing is that the already non optimisation for the design, is expected to become a non optimised design, following a period being put in to service.

Does this suggest, Cart's especially of a certain value, where one would expect all models to be equal at the time of manufacture, are variable in certain elements within their design, hence offering a variant in a end sound, where an end sound of one could easily prove to be perceived as the better option.

Does such a variant in the Cart's condition at the time of manufacture also strongly suggest, as the Cart' becomes non optimised through usage, as a result of choices made for the manufacture, the Cart's will become more noticeably separated in their end sound over a not too long period of usage??

When you use the term "optimized", do you refer to consistency of the manufacture of a given model or do you refer to a particular construction (body materials, cantilever type, stylus shape, coils, etc) that you deem to be optimal?

I've arranged to have whatever cart I buy sent directly to WAM for analysis and then returned to me with some Wally Tools.

I refer to a Cartridge that comes at a premium purchase price, being one that is not specifically produced under the most stringent quality controls, even to the point that Supply Chain Parts are selected for the most accurate assembly, or given a furthering of a Treatment the design team see as beneficial.

This topic ha been broached on in another recent thread, but got swept away from being kept ongoing, why not have it out here.  

For the past 5 years I lived with both, a Benz Micro LP-S ebony and an Audio technical ART-1000. I sold the benz last year, because the ART-1000 just gives more "life" to "live" recordings: deeper sound stage, sharper attacks, better focus around soloists. And now they have an improved version out with a square geometry of the coils, which supposedly gives more electro-magnetic flux. I can strongly recommend both, but in the end preferred the ART-1000. Until three months ago that is. On a recent business trip to Japan I met Mr. Sawada of ARLabs in Hamamatsu, who played his Miyaji MEMS cartridge for me a) in his living room, and b) in a coffee shop that is specialized to play analog music to its patrons through a 1 million dollar system featuring the large Avantgarde horn speaker assembly with plasma tweeters and a pair of super-woofers the size of a garage door. The cartridge is unlike anything on the market, as it is based on acoustically "listening" to the stylus movement with two independent square-millimeter-sized condenser microphones inside the cartridge body. In other words, the same physics here for playing a record that were used to record it. The result is complete linearity over the entire audible frequency spectrum (forget about RIAA equalization). Here is a website, which leads you further: https://www.monoandstereo.com/new-arsound-miyaji-mems-cartridge/ , or here: https://gestalthifi.com/arsound/. Long story short: I was so blown away by the life-like presentation of this instrument (in both venues) that I bought it on the spot after abusing a local ATM. In my opinion, this cartridge is a complete game changer based on fundamentally different physics, and a cartridge that tracks at 1.5 grams (!) and does not need a phono stage with its 250 mV (!) output. Price wise it is around $5,000 if you buy it stateside. So, if you have not yet bought another MC, you owe it to yourself to audition the future. Sadly, my beloved ART-1000 sits in the drawer now.