chakster said:"cost has nothing to do with performance, if you think $1000 is modest price then you are ignoring the world of vintage cartridges, they are all under $1000, sometimes 50%, but they are easily killing those $3000 MC carts"
You can keep telling yourself that cost has nothing to do with objectively improved performance and while sometimes of course you are certainly correct much more often you are completely and utterly wrong that is why there are significantly expensive cartridges available to install in Music Reproduction Systems. Your vintage cartridge is most likely dried up because of advanced age and of course if you bought it used there's no way to know its condition without using a proper microscope I have a USB microscope and have examined used cartridges for friends and in every single case the stylus looks so bad I wouldn't play even one of my old used records on it a bad stylus can destroy a good record in just one playing! You have a romantic notion of these old cartridges and some people have romantic notions of old cars but you're old car wouldn't compare to a good modern car and the same is true with cartridges in fact it is even more true with cartridges because they dry up but of course if you are happy with your old worn dried up cartridge that is fine just don't fool yourself into believing it can compete with a good new one because they are worlds apart.
You can keep telling yourself that cost has nothing to do with objectively improved performance and while sometimes of course you are certainly correct much more often you are completely and utterly wrong that is why there are significantly expensive cartridges available to install in Music Reproduction Systems. Your vintage cartridge is most likely dried up because of advanced age and of course if you bought it used there's no way to know its condition without using a proper microscope I have a USB microscope and have examined used cartridges for friends and in every single case the stylus looks so bad I wouldn't play even one of my old used records on it a bad stylus can destroy a good record in just one playing! You have a romantic notion of these old cartridges and some people have romantic notions of old cars but you're old car wouldn't compare to a good modern car and the same is true with cartridges in fact it is even more true with cartridges because they dry up but of course if you are happy with your old worn dried up cartridge that is fine just don't fool yourself into believing it can compete with a good new one because they are worlds apart.