Vintage MONO Cartridge Question ?

Grado doesn't do moving coil. They have two elliptical stylus moving iron cartridges, the MC+ with a 3-piece telescoped cantilever for $90 and the ME+ with 4-piece cantilver for $150. The last time I checked, the ME+ was a Stereophile recommended component.

I have an Audio Technica AT-MONO3/LP. It's a high output (1.2mV) moving coil cartridge with conical stylus. It retails at $189 at LpGear.com, but I got mine for around $116 on Amazon. Currently they're $132 there. I'm very happy with it. It's very quiet on old mono LPs and has transparent, honest sound and dynamics. It opened up my 2014 mono Beatles LPs significantly.

Thank you for your response; however it was not what I was looking for. 

Grado offered moving coil cartridges from the mid 1950's-mid 1960's before changing to moving iron.

The 3 cartridges I mentioned are true single coil cartridges, rather than 2 coil construction adapted for mono.  All are vintage, and were made before 1960.  My intended use is to play pre 1962 mono LPs.

I'll never understand why people buy used phono cartridges. <shudder> Yes, you can have them rebuilt, but that's a dicey proposition and you can never be sure what you'll have when the service is complete. If ever there was an audio component to buy new, the phono cartridge is it, imo.

Cleeds, I don't agree with your gross generalization, but that's beside the point.  The OP seems to want a true mono cartridge, and most of those are going to be "vintage" by definition.  It might be more constructive to direct him to consider one of the very few modern mono cartridges that are also "true mono", if you are leery of "used" cartridges (which I am not).  I think EMT and Ortofon still make new, true mono cartridges, but I cannot name model names.  Then too, there is Miyajima.  Miyajima market a whole line of true mono cartridges, designed from the ground up to be mono.  Also, Miyajima offer a choice of 1.0mil or 0.7mil stylus tip radius, if you are anal about early mono vs later mono and groove width.  

Iopscri, I have no idea why you choose 1962 as some sort of cut-off point for early vs later mono. There is mass confusion on the internet regarding this subject, and I don't believe there are hard facts about dates; each company was doing what it wanted to do, and they were not all in synch back then.

I take it you want a cartridge that will play pre-1962 mono records in their native mode--in other words, not a cartridge designed to track both mono and stereo records. In other words, with only two signal pinouts (+ and -), and cantilever compliance only in the horizontal plane.

The Denon DL-102 has an internal mono coil arrangement and just two signal pins--one positive and one negative to create a single output channel. It's a high output (3 mV) moving coil cartridge. It is compliant in both planes, but is internally and externally wired to only pick up horizontal motion. I found this description/review on Dagogo enlightening. 

Also, I stand by my recommendation for the Audio Technica AT-MONO3/LP. I got it for playing my 2014 Beatles mono records, but I've found it does well on pre-1962 mono LPs as well. It is dead-quiet in the vertical plane, and makes old mono LPs sound really quiet. Such mono LPs sound unlistenably noisy with a stereo cart.