Dear @madavid0: What needs a good cartridge from the tonearm?:
- pretty decent bearing ( it does not needs the " hardest " one. ) design.
- very well damped
- first rate (silver ) internal wiring with very best ( silver ) female cartridge connectors.
- accurate and user friendly cartridge/tonearm protractor.
- precise VTA/SRA/VTF, scating and AZ mechanisms
- non-unipivot design.
More or less those are the main targets a cartridge is looking for. Normally good tonearms even almost all those targets and the differences in between can comes form te: executuon quality of the design, build materials used as magnesium, titatinium, wood, etc, etc, arm wand shape as J or S type, type of damp used, build material used at the bearings: stell, tungsten, ceramic, etc, etc., effective length and effective mass.
In reality there are many individual characteristics that makes the differences but not necessarily for the price.
Could happens that a specific cartridge can performs better in a Jelco than in a SAT or Triplanar one and this not really tell you that the Jelco is better but only that the cartridge is a better match with the Jelco.
Obviously that as anything in audio reproduction is room/system dependent and dependent too on each one of us MUSIC/Audio priorities.
Never exist and " easy " way to explain the kind of questions you posted because so many parameters involved .
R.
- pretty decent bearing ( it does not needs the " hardest " one. ) design.
- very well damped
- first rate (silver ) internal wiring with very best ( silver ) female cartridge connectors.
- accurate and user friendly cartridge/tonearm protractor.
- precise VTA/SRA/VTF, scating and AZ mechanisms
- non-unipivot design.
More or less those are the main targets a cartridge is looking for. Normally good tonearms even almost all those targets and the differences in between can comes form te: executuon quality of the design, build materials used as magnesium, titatinium, wood, etc, etc, arm wand shape as J or S type, type of damp used, build material used at the bearings: stell, tungsten, ceramic, etc, etc., effective length and effective mass.
In reality there are many individual characteristics that makes the differences but not necessarily for the price.
Could happens that a specific cartridge can performs better in a Jelco than in a SAT or Triplanar one and this not really tell you that the Jelco is better but only that the cartridge is a better match with the Jelco.
Obviously that as anything in audio reproduction is room/system dependent and dependent too on each one of us MUSIC/Audio priorities.
Never exist and " easy " way to explain the kind of questions you posted because so many parameters involved .
R.