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Cartridge Opinions - Sorry

Yeah, another dumb "what's your opinion on these cartridges" thread. Back in the late 80's we had dealers where you could listen to the stuff.

So anyhow I have a Linn LP12 with Ittok arm and a 30 year old Audioquest B200L cartridge. I'm running it through the phono stage of a Jeff Rowland Coherence One into a Spectral DMA90 through a set of Kef R300's.

I prefer a little more laid back sound (err on the side of forgiving instead of fatiguing) but I like a lot of upper end detail, precise soundstaging, air, etc.

So far I'm considering an Ortofon Quintet S Black, Hana SL or a Benz wood - something at or below the $1k level.

I'd love to hear any opinions, suggestions, and experiences with those cartridges or others in the price range. I could possibly go higher if there is something out there that really shines for less than $1,500.

Thanks.


klooker
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
I'm not sure either. He builds each cartridge himself and has quite a lab.
I suspect a lot of the performance comes from manual tweaking and testing. The more expensive the cartridge the more attention it gets, the better the performance. I suspect this is impractical to do on a mass assembly basis. Every cartridge would cost 20 grand. The most expensive part of any cartridge is labor. If this is the case, how long can this type of performance last? How fast does it degrade? Is it worth it in the end? The best part is the cartridges are not supplied with a stylus guard! I just broke the cantilever of my 20K cartridge:(
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,152 posts
 
please post your favorite tonearms, except for Triplanar and SME
FWIW while I had the SME5 for some years, It's not one of my faves, although the 12" seems to be pretty nice. The 4-point arms from Kuzma have worked well for me. The problem here is that I have master tapes and I've only heard a couple of combinations that really held up in that regard. To that end, even though I don't have one, the Triplanar 12" seems to be the best I've heard. Now if you leave the master tape issue out of it, I've heard a lot of arms that seemed to sound just fine.
rauliruegas
13,129 posts
 
Dear @lewm  @mijostyn : The delivery time inin Allaerts for this models is 4-6 months !  after your pay in advance.

Why so much time for if he don't sale " thousands " of cartridges ?.

R.
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
I think he makes 4-5 cartridges a week at most. 
rauliruegas
13,129 posts
 
@mijostyn : Yes, I posted that because what you said about:

"  He builds each cartridge himself and has quite a lab.
I suspect a lot of the performance comes from manual tweaking and testing. The more expensive the cartridge the more attention it gets, the better the performance. I suspect this is impractical to do on a mass assembly basis..."""

eacg single tinny detail takes from him a lot of time to achieve those kind of quality level performance and numbers.

R.
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