@rbstehno
Normantaylor-creating a thread like this will get you a mix of people that don’t want to spend any amount of money on audio pieces like cables and cartridges or people that think their $100 piece is a giant killer.
Some used high-end cables are not expensive, sometimes people selling their cables for -70% of retail price. So $100 secondhand cable can be good too. Skilled in soldering can see how good is the phono cable, here i want to mention Zu Audio for their great cables, well build and good sounding compared to much more expensive cables.
If you have a nice tt with a $8k tonearm, you won’t be using a $500 cartridge.
Then look at Halcro's system and his collection of vintage MM cartridges.
I am happy to use $500 cartridge on my $5k tonearm if this cheap cartridge is able to give me what i like, and the Garrott P77 was one of them. I think this is great idea, who said you have to pay $3k for a cartridge? I paid actually, so this is not about the money, it's about satisfaction. It's about the music after all. Some of the most involving cartridges are not the most expensive ones.
Life is not so simple, everyone can make their own research in cartridges, so many of them around from different manufacturers/designers, different era, etc ... quality is not primary related to the price, they are all high quality, but we like some of them better than others for some reason.
If I was searching for a high budget cartridge, I would make sure that you have a tonearm and phono preamp that can support such cartridge and then go listen if possible to cartridges that will work in your system.
True, very important.