Cartridges: Complete Scam?

@madavid0 

Multiple people told me they perffered thier old vintage cartridges over modern laser-cut boron-necked diamonds.

In the 70's Technics used laser technology to make a tiny hole in the hollow pipe boron cantilever to mount their nude diamond of untla low mass. This is an old technology, but hollow pipe boron cantilevers are not available anymore for the today's manufacturers. In the 70s this technology was utilized in Moving Magnet design! Today it is not available even for the multi-thousand Moving Coil cartridges.  

You may not understand what you're talking about, but in some point the vintage cartridges are indeed better and more affordable for "normal people". But it doesn't mean that very expensive modern MC are bad, sometimes the price is just 10 times as much if you are willing to buy good ones. So the question is $800 or $8000 ? For me it is not the question anymore, i would rather buy 10 vintage cartridges for $8000 than just one new MC for the same price. But in general those rare $800 MM from the 80s are very close or sometimes better than new $8000 MC in my opinion. The question is which one and that's why tryin' 10 different carts is better than hoping for full satisfaction with 1 overpriced MC.  

I take walks when I get annoyed, here lately I find myself so far from home I have to call a cab.

I agree with Randy-11 (above).  however, even though there may not be a dramatic step up, the difference may very well be appreciated in the listener.  Also, the cartridge has to be set up to its best advantage, and all the ancillary equipment must be complimentary.

From good to exquisite is a long way, and many thousands of dollars.

If you have a good rig, you only need a "good" cartridge, an exquisite one would be a waste of money. I assume you know that a chain is no stronger than it's weakest link, meaning that an expensive cartridge will do you no good without "expensive" matching tone arm and turntable.

Last but not least is, how good is your hearing? When you take into account all these factors, an expensive cartridge might be a waste of money for you.

For the record, for me, I categorically and respectfully disagree with your postulate.  OK?  My rebuttal is only soft in that you are free to disagree with me, but I would take it less seriously until you have done some critical listening yourself.  

Others here are posting based on their personal experience, and their level of experience with “vintage” cartridges and their implementation might be considerably greater than my own.  But I have carefully listened to a lot of high end systems starting in the early 70s, and the sum of the parts for a high end analog system sounds very different from then to now.  For me.  So of course is the price, which like everything has inflated due to monetary “inflation”, inflated expectations, inflated egos, and real advances in technologies, materials and effort.

In 1970, a “very good” but not SOTA turntable was $150, and a very good cartridge perhaps half to 3/4 of that.  In today’s dollars, that would be about $1500.  It is possible that you could buy a new setup with an mm cartidge for that amount that would sound as good as the 1970s combo, but I doubt it. In those days the vintage system would be played through the phono pre built into the amplifier and all gear connected using zip cord and skinny unsheilded RCAs.

Going the other way, a “very good” but not SOTA current analog front end with an MC cartridge and an outboard phono preamp would cost say $20,000 new.  That is about $3,300 in 1970 dollars, which would be an unheard of amount to spend on a part of your hifi at the time for anyone but a movie producer. Inflation of all kinds in effect here.

All that said, the current “very good” system would likely sound better connected to the same modern backend than the 1970s “very good” system.

The system I described in my first post as revelatory was set up by Peter McGrath of Wilson Audio and Michael Fremer of Stereophile and Analog Planet and was very high end using Lyra cartridge, SME table, ARC electronics, Transparent cables and large Wilson speakers (Alexandria?). It cost probably $350,000.  

That is $70,000 in mid seventies dollars.  My guess is that would be a reasonable investment for a midling recording studio at the time.  Home system?  You would be laughed off my island, but maybe you ran with a different crowd at the time. Nothing I heard outside of a well engineered rock concert or well designed concert hall in the 1970s could come close to what came out of the system set up by Fremer and McGrath.  Nothing else actually ever has.

So you ask “Cartridges: Complete Scam?  I say no. The upper end of MC cartridges today played in a very high end system will sound more neutral, revealing and faster than high end vintage cartridges.  In the middle range you really have to listen to different pickups in your system to decide what works and what does not, and where the value is.  For you.