Cartridge reliability

V15’s and Infinity black widows 

Excuse me chakster. The top 4 cartridges in the Dynavetor line have a compliance of 10 um/mN. That is most definitely at the low end of the scale. Better with heavier arms.

It’s a common mistake @mijostyn

Japanese manufacturers measure dynamic compliance at 100Hz, not 10Hz as you expect!

Dynavector is not a low compliance cartridge, to convert compliance from 100Hz (Japanese system) to 10Hz you have to multiply it on 1.7 at least.

It’s been discussed before on another forum:

"On to the information contained in the response from Dynavector, 100 Hz is not the normal 10 Hz used for compliance testing and there are notations about this on the cartridge database indicating that the compliance might be as much as twice as high at the normal 10 Hz test frequency."

I own Dynavector cartridges.
What I have now is 17D2 mkII (dynamic compliance 15 @ 100Hz)

BUT at 10Hz it’s nearly 26 cu and this is definitely not a low compliance, you know that Grado MI is 30cu and it’s high compliance.

For this reason you can see Dynavector KARAT on Well Tempered Lab tonearms.

@zavato

V15’s and Infinity black widows

Not the best cartridge and average lightmass tonearm (fragile).

Denon DA-401 tonearm is much better, as for the cartridges you can try low impedance (low output) MM like Pickering XLZ-7500 designed for MC phono stage (or MM phono stage with high gain), or even with SUT or Headamp. Spectacular cartridge with user replaceable Stereohedron stylus, the best model (top of the line, expensive). Low impedance MM are unique. Expert stylus in UK can service them.

Regarding some very nice MM look for SONY XL-50 with Boron Pipe cantilever, this is a high compliance cartridge. Jico replacement available for this model, but original is superior.

I'm using a 20+ year old Lyra Cclavis D.C.  The ONLY problem I ever had was a worn stylus.  Not worn out, just worn.  The stylus and cantilever were replaced a couple of years ago by Soundsmith.  I'm still satisfied with the cartridge.  I have a Lyra Skala that I intend to install one of these days.

I heard something recently about stylus longevity. My dealer said in passing that he was glad he sold me a Koetsu, because some clients had experienced excessive wear on some other expensive cartridges. This may be for any number of reasons, like not cleaning records, etc. But my experience with Koetsu is very good in this respect: minimal wear at 1000 hours.

I note also that Soundsmith puts their money behind their mouth with retipping. You could do worse.

Chakster, how do you know that any manufacturer's compliance rating is at 10 or 100 Hz. It usually does not say. Certainly the math is done at 10 Hz  RF = 159 divided by the square root of Mass X Compliance. So it makes more sense to report it at 10 Hz. You assume that just because a cartridge comes from Japan that it is automatically reported at 100 Hz. 
I do not use the math. I stick to lighter tonearms than add mass as needed by actually measuring the resonance frequency. The variables are poorly controlled so to be accurate there is no other way. Go ahead and put an XV-1t in a 12 gram arm and tell us what happens.  If there are any owners of XV-1t's out there tell us what arm you use it in. I do not own a Dynavector. But, the arms I have seen the XV-1t in would squash a cartridge with a compliance of 20 um/mN at 10 Hz, unless they have been poorly matched. I suppose stranger things have happened. 
Moving magnet cartridges tend to be more compliant than moving coil cartridges because their moving mass tends to be lower. I have an Audio Technica VM95ML It's compliance is listed as 7 um/mH at 100Hz. That would make it 14 um/mN at 10 Hz. This AT is less compliant than the Dynavector? It is less compliant than most MM cartridges probably because it is a dual magnet design. More mass requires a higher compliance to keep the resonance peak of the cartridge up out of the audio band. Obviously it would help if the manufacturers would specify specifically how the compliance was measured.