70’s rock pressings. Witch equipment deserve?

I don't know what kind of equipment you own  But I use a Shitt Mani phono pre.Its as good as Regas and others selling for $500 .I have lots of 70s Rock and Prog and Soundtracks ....ELP sounds great Now.

I agree with @chakster 

Two of my more costly vintage MM cartridges I had checked by Soundsmith and were said to be operating as good as new. One was actually nos and the other had an estimated 150 hours. Or else I was just lucky. 

Very interesting - that was my exact feeling about this much revered arm. I kept my opinions to myself lest I be outed as a cloth eared cretin. Peerless in some departments, but very boring, as it cannot convey rhythmic information with any conviction.

I had an SME V on a VPI TNT 3 about 12 years ago.  I always thought it sounded lifeless too. I sold it and bought a Eminent Technology 2 tonearm and it brought my system back to life in a big way.  I miss that combo.

Grado GOLD is relatively cheap cartridge, i like Grado too, but by reference Grado is Signature model from Joseph Grado (model XTZ).

Yes, we’re running one of those in our shop turntable.

No one would buy all those expensive vintage cartridges if there could be any single problem with suspension or anything else,

What?? Of course they would- because they don’t have a good reference for knowing how the cartridge performed when new! The only way I would buy an older MM cartridge would be if it had a replaceable stylus and I knew i could get it. The cartridge body will last indefinitely and the stylus is very hard to wear out, but the cantilever suspension is the tricky bit and pretty vulnerable to the ravages of time. I’ve brought some back to life by applying a small bit of brake fluid to the suspension and letting it sit for a while positioned in such a way that the fluid didn’t contaminate the stylus. But that’s really a move of desperation (although it did buy me nearly a year before it was obvious the suspension was just gone). It doesn’t always work, depending on what happened to the suspension when it perished- did it get hard or go to goo? If hard, there’s a chance it will come around. If goo, you’ll need a new stylus.

Suspension on brand new LOMC cartridges collapse faster than stylus, those cartridges cost $3000-5000.

None of my MM/MI cartridges have such problem even if they are 30-40 y.o. Most of the vintage MM or MI are high compliance (30-50cu), even if you can imagine that the rubber is a bit stiffer it is not a problem at all, they are still fantastic in terms of sound quality. Simple test on Hi-Fi Test LP and anyone can check suspension condition, those cartridges easily pass all 4 tracks, the last track is an extreme high modulation groove, bad cartridges simply jump out of the groove, but all my vintage MM/MI do not skip on this track. Checked this Grace LEVEL II Ruby yesterday on Hi-Fi News Test LP, great tracker! No problem at all. Same with every vintage MM or MI in my collection.

Sometimes I just don’t understand why people have so much problems, i never had anything like that with vintage cartridges, except for Technics MM cartridges! This is where the rubber formula is so bad. But even in this situation the rubber is softened, not stiff.

I have never seen a Grace, Stanton, Pickering, Audio-Technica, Pioneer, Garrott ... with softened or stiff rubber damper in my life.

Apart from Technics that almost always have serious problem with damper I recall only one model of Victor with the same problem (the X1), but in the next X1II series this problem was solved by the manufacturer (tried many samples and all are fine). Always hunting for NOS styli for vintage MM and bought many of them.