Best cheapo Cartridge

The Audio Technica has great depth and etched high frequencies. But there's some grain or slight harshness in the rendition.

So I compared my AT VM540SH with my Decca Super Gold/Paratrace and Decca Garrott Export and both Decca's really are in another league. 

Dark, quiet backgrounds, voices that sound real, speakers disappeared, but most absolutely the difference is that the Decca makes music with emotion. No contest, notwithstanding the priced difference.

Dear @pops  : You don't need to look for vintage cartridges when you can own today really good cartridge performers coming from many solid and well regarded manufacturers as: Ortofon, Nagaoka, Grado, SoundSmith, Audio Note, Audio Technica, Goldring, Clearaudio and others. With the advantage that you have a manufacturer warranty for your unit and for the replacement stylus when you need it.
Only you need is to go to those manufacturers sites, here Audio Technica:

https://www.audio-technica.com/cgi-bin/product_search/cartridges/cartridges.pl?lang=eng  

Btw, @noromance  it's obvious that a 249.00 cartridge can't compete with that Decca but for its low price is better performer that what we can think. Audio Technica has all alternatives for any audiophile but other manufacturers have good options too. Audio Note MM are excellent.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

@rauliruegas It's the 540SH - $400.

The Sumiko Pearl works for me (Linn Basik/Akito)...I like these enough that I've replaced the stylus once for 50 bucks or something, but for whatever they sell for now ($120 maybe?) as I assume they're discontinuing these things, they're a bargain as they're a great sounding MM cartridge that seems to suffer from the fact that it's so inexpensive.

"I believe anything under $1k is a cheap cartridge for audiophiles."

Couldn’t really disagree much more, unless "audiophiles" is used as a synonym for "people with delusions of grandeur and/or obsessive/compulsive disorder"

I’ve heard/auditioned a good number of Koetsu, Kisekis, Miyajimas and whatnot up through the years and frankly my ART9 gives them all a run for the money. Many of the former sacrifice precision and neutrality for obvious emphasis on midrange, "body" or whatever else the maker(s) subjectively consider desireable. If that’s what you’re after then that’s well and good, but to say it makes them "better" is simply folly of the highest order.

My current favourite by a very, very tiny degree is the Allnic Puritas, since it reproduces the timbre of stringed instruments and female voices better and more accurately than anything I’ve heard up until now. It’s a $5000 cartridge, but quite frankly I’d say it’s worth maybe a couple of hundred more than the ART9 purely in terms of its sonic qualities.

As far as I’m concerned an AT150MLX or Sa (no experience with the VM series yet) properly set up will provide sound quality equalling most MCs up to several times its price and take you most of the way to audiophile heaven. Provided, of course, that audiophile is used to mean what it actually means.

All in my opinion, with my (very good) hearing and in my system (or rather systems through the years).