Van Den Hul what is the best cart ?

Andy some cartridges and arms together do not have synergy,maybe the people who were wowed by the colibri had the synergy and maybe those who were not wowed did not. There is not one cartridge that I know that has synergy with every arm built.
As far as quality control I have heard of problems and it happens,buy from someone who will exchange it no questions asked or refund your money.

The main problem is not quality control, the problem is to buy a cartridge and be sure that if you've got a problem the manufacturer will really do the best to resolve your problem and it's not the case at all with some manufacturers. It's always easy for them to say that you are not able to adjust your cartridge or your tonearm is not the good one.
I had a problem with a high end cartridge that couldn't read more than 50µm, the manufacturer didn't make anything for me.... and is was not a hand made Van Den Hul

As I said Google on the colibri it is a fantastic
cartridge,it's fast,it's dynamic,it throws a huge
Soundstage but will it have synergy with your
tonearm? I too thought of buying one,lord knows
they still sell in Europe for 5000.00 but here on
Audiogon there are some real steals listed. Your
right there are so many versions of this
cartridge so do your self a favor and gather as
much information on which one is a better fit for
your tonearm. Which one better suits your phono
stage HOMC or LOMC. I settled for a HOMC Sumiko
Talisman Virtuoso that was fitted with a VDH
stylus and titanium cantliver and I'm happy with
my choice. It mated well with my tonearm and my
Whest Titan Pro phono pre amp.

Van den Hul offers free inspection of the cart after the first 100-150 hours, which is very useful. Expect optimization only with no downsides. Best vdH cart for me is Condor, but depending on sound preferences and system signature, you might prefer other model - body, texture, resolution, etc.

I have 2 Colibris, one copper coil, another platinum coil, both with the plastic bodies. My experience mirrored many of the comments in this thread.

Sound. The Colibri sounds very fast and airy, it has the best treble of all the cartridges that I have tried in my system. However, the bass and mid-bass is on the lean side. If I understand correctly, VDH used the SME V as the reference tonearm when he designed the Colibri. While I have never tried this combo myself, I believe it has the synergy.

Reliability. I have to agree the Colibri is more fragile than most cartridges. I have sent mine back for repair a couple of times. The interesting thing is that it came back with a different length cantilever everytime! I have seen at least 3 different cantilever lengths. The shortest one was so short that the cartridge bottom was no more than 1mm (IIRC) from the LP surface.

Output. My platinum coil Colibri is listed as 0.25mv from the factory, but with the same gain and volume setting, the volume is much lower than a Denon 103R, which lead me to believe its output is probably closer to (or lower than) 0.2mv than 0.25mv.