Cartridge Opinions - Sorry

I’m only interested in vintage cartridges such as the Audio Technica AT-ML180/OCC or OFC cartridges and the OEM corresponding styli.

This is a hell of a cartridge and much better than AT's LOMC 
I don't know how but i bought two NOS styli for my AT-ML180 after 5 years of searching. Another (very close) model is AT-ML170 @tyray

 

Yeah chakster the only reason I haven’t gotten back to you is the funds aren’t available yet.

Although I do agree with others here that the stylus and cartridge maybe more important than the tone arm WHEN mechanically reproducing sound from vinyl.

@tyray Dave Slagle recently sent an article to me by Peter Moncreif, who did some testing on cartridges and how they make distortion. It was an interesting read! I found it interesting that while he was able to show that the cartridges did seem to make distortion, he really didn't go into much about the arm despite testing a good number of cartridges. Yet no mention of the arm, but we all know that getting the cartridge/arm combination to work its mechanical resonance has to be in the 7-12Hz range, and otherwise how tiny little tweaks in the adjustment can have a huge affect on the result!


It obvious to me that if there is an adjustment on an arm that is tricky to set up, the chances of getting it correct are vastly reduced. We've all heard cartridges make distortion; if you can set all the parameters right, then its clear that distortion is reduced. I've seen arms that don't allow for adjusting the VTA, others that allow you to adjust it, but only by loosening a screw and moving the entire arm (the old Grace is an example of this); many have no adjustment for azimuth whatsoever... To put this to an extreme to make my point, you can't expect to put a $5000 cartridge in a Voice of Music tonearm (google images...) and expect it to work properly! So at what point do you draw the line? What I've found is that the arm is more important if you really want to get things right- so that is where I make that distinction.

@atmasphere  I agree with you 100%, the arm is more important than the cartridge. This is fairly easy to hear, place a lesser cartridge on a great arm and you will hear everything that the cartridge can give off, however, place a great cartridge on a poor arm ( and there are a ton of those) and you will not hear what that cartridge can do. 

Dear @daveyf  : You an atmasphere are taking wrong arguments to prove tonearm is more important that obviously it's not. Let me explain.

You can mount a great cartridge in a good tonearm and even that the combination can sounds bad. Things are not so easy as you stated.

poor tonearms? well really poor tonearms almost does not exist, at least the gimball ones. Even Rega is a good tonearm and has not VTA adjustment.

Cartridge per sé develops distortions coming from the tracking extremely hard task and those distortions are added by the ones developed by the TT/tonearm feedback and transmitted through the cartridge body that develops its own distortions. But the grooves tracked signal must pass through the cartridge coils/wire and through the output terminals and over there are developed distortions too. So obviously that cartridge develops distortions because the archaic LP overall medium. Even that it's the cartridge whom makes the tracking to pick up the the information of the recorded groove modulations.

A good tonearm can't help much more to that task because only can hold the cartridge and adds more distortions generated through all the tonearm construction parts and there is no perfect tonearm when almost all are not really well damped to put at minimum the tonearm generated distortions and generated feedback distortions ( vibrations, resonances, etc, etc. )

Now, we can have a great cartridge mounted in a great tonearm and even can't shows at its best if the TT/cartridge/tonearm overall alignment/geometry set up is not made it accurately.

Other than Rega all today tonearms comes with AZ, VTA/SRA, etc, etc, facilities.

Many times a cartridge sounds better in a not so great tonearm than in a great one because it's better matched to that tonearm characteristic of its developed distortions.

Cartridge is like speakers, is a transducer and this facts makes these two system links the more system important links.

Please let me know a today " poor " tonearm of the " ton " you stated.

I can mention today good tonearms: SME, Reed, Durand, SAT, VPI ( gimball. ), Triplanar, Jelco, Rega ( you can add an inexpensive after market dedicated VTA mechanism. ), Ortofon, DaVinci, Pluto, Cobra, Dynavector, Audio Note, Brinkmann, Thales, Schroeder, Linn, Townshend, Kuzma  etc. Which is a bad tonearm?

You can be sure that any cartridge performs different mounted in any of those tonearms due that each tonearm develops different distortion ( every kind. ) levels but that cartridge develops the sound that we listen trhough the speakers.

After the LP cartridge is the " source " and yes can't works with out a tonearm but can't works with out a TT too or with out a phono stage.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.