Hey guys,
I´m not exactly new to analog, but I´m certainly a new kid on the block here at Audiogon. I would like to thank you all for your posts, this forum has been a valuable source of information (and entertainment) to me for the past couple years. On to the OP question: it is not a scam, but analog takes a lot of effort. We´re hardly talking plug and play stuff here and there´s a lot more into replacing a cart than there´s into replacing a DAC (or a cd-player for that matter).
You may buy a cart that´s 10 times more expensive and get bad results if your tone-arm is not up to the task of handling the new cart. Things can also go very bad if your phono is not a good match to it. I have a love and hate relationship with analog, but that´s all part of the fun. Of course it is not a scam, much in the same way that power cords are not a scam. I don´t mean to be rude here, but I usually find that those kind of comments mostly come from people who are not willing to (or simply cannot) afford this kind of stuff.
If everything else is working properly (tonearm and phono) with the new cart, the differences are instantly recognizable and not minimal. They´re quite addictive actually, but careful system matching is crucial and there are so many components in an analog rig that you can easily screw things up by replacing the cart (even for a much more expensive unit).
I´m not exactly new to analog, but I´m certainly a new kid on the block here at Audiogon. I would like to thank you all for your posts, this forum has been a valuable source of information (and entertainment) to me for the past couple years. On to the OP question: it is not a scam, but analog takes a lot of effort. We´re hardly talking plug and play stuff here and there´s a lot more into replacing a cart than there´s into replacing a DAC (or a cd-player for that matter).
You may buy a cart that´s 10 times more expensive and get bad results if your tone-arm is not up to the task of handling the new cart. Things can also go very bad if your phono is not a good match to it. I have a love and hate relationship with analog, but that´s all part of the fun. Of course it is not a scam, much in the same way that power cords are not a scam. I don´t mean to be rude here, but I usually find that those kind of comments mostly come from people who are not willing to (or simply cannot) afford this kind of stuff.
If everything else is working properly (tonearm and phono) with the new cart, the differences are instantly recognizable and not minimal. They´re quite addictive actually, but careful system matching is crucial and there are so many components in an analog rig that you can easily screw things up by replacing the cart (even for a much more expensive unit).