Looking at your specific equipment I suspect that what is likely to make the greatest sonic difference when it comes to cabling would be to have a technician rewire your turntable with a phono cable having very low capacitance. And re-doing the internal wiring of the tonearm while he’s at it.
While Nagaoka doesn’t appear to provide a load capacitance recommendation for the MP200, several other Nagaoka cartridges having fairly similar specs have load capacitance recommendations of 100 pf (picofarads). That is an **extremely** low number, which most setups will not come close to achieving. (The load capacitance seen by the cartridge is the sum of the capacitances of the turntable’s internal and external wiring, plus the unspecified input capacitance of the phono section of your receiver, and the capacitance of the connectors that are in the path).
Consistent with some of the earlier responses, low cable capacitance does not necessarily mean high price. For example, inexpensive Blue Jeans LC-1 has a very low capacitance of 12 pf per foot.
Assuming the turntable’s cable is of typical length, say 5 or 6 feet, it wouldn’t surprise me if the cartridge is presently seeing a total load capacitance of 250 to 300 pf, or close to three times the amount that may be optimal for the particular cartridge. The consequence of having too much capacitance would most likely be excessive brightness in the mid-treble region and/or under-emphasis and dullness in the upper treble.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al
