The mass of my Project 1 expression 2 carbon fiber tonearm is around 8.6 grams which I understand is on the medium side . The specs on the compliance of the Nagaoka MP110 puts it a little on the low side for a moving magnet cartridge . After over 50 hours of breakin sometimes I was having a little dryness with upfront sound on some recordings in the uppermidrange . Put some blutack on the headshell to see if the uppermidrange forwardness was caused by compliance problems between cartridge and tonearm .
The forwardness was subdued greatly up to the point where its not a problem anymore .
I like the MP110 very much . It's a very coherent and controlled sound that hardly ever irritates . Its bass is not the most powerful or tight but is in line with the sound spectrum of the cartridge . It doesn't jump out at you but its there when you want to hear whats going on down there .
Come to think of it this would describe the sound of the cartridge as a whole .
Now what is it that I don't like about its sonics on my turntable that has prompt me to upgrade ?
Its lacking of low level detail . It seems that it is so smooth that in its intent of always sounding smooth it took away a bit to much information . Bare in mind I am not talking about dynamics . It is nicely dynamic . For the price its a very.musical cartridge but its musicality comes at the expense of a lack of uppermid and high frequency information . Does the MP150 give me whats missing in the MP110 or in order to get it must the move be towards the MP200 ?
The forwardness was subdued greatly up to the point where its not a problem anymore .
I like the MP110 very much . It's a very coherent and controlled sound that hardly ever irritates . Its bass is not the most powerful or tight but is in line with the sound spectrum of the cartridge . It doesn't jump out at you but its there when you want to hear whats going on down there .
Come to think of it this would describe the sound of the cartridge as a whole .
Now what is it that I don't like about its sonics on my turntable that has prompt me to upgrade ?
Its lacking of low level detail . It seems that it is so smooth that in its intent of always sounding smooth it took away a bit to much information . Bare in mind I am not talking about dynamics . It is nicely dynamic . For the price its a very.musical cartridge but its musicality comes at the expense of a lack of uppermid and high frequency information . Does the MP150 give me whats missing in the MP110 or in order to get it must the move be towards the MP200 ?