Cartridge reliability

The van den Hul cartridges are known for their hight degree of variable quality. The inespensive one are usally pretty good. The expensive ones it's a crap shoot. If you get a good one they are execptional. However, if you get one that is not good they are horrible (collasped cantilever. stylus falling off the cantilever,motor assembly not straight on the half body) and gobs of glue all over the place.

My 40 year old Supex, Shure, Audio Technica, Stanton, Signet and Grace cartridges still work like new, except of course for stylus wear.  Unfortunately, the actual stylus diamond just disappeared from my Yamaha MC9.  I reset everything on my turntable more than once before I figured that out.

Chakster, that may true in Japan but how do you know the importer, knowing their audience reports it at 10 Hz. You don't because it does not say. You can call the importer and ask I suppose. MC cartridges keep their compliance down so the cartridges principle resonance frequency is above the audio range. The lighter the effective mass of the moving system the higher you can run the compliance. Dynavector makes a great cartridge and the XV-1t has the lightest moving mass of the line with it's cross shaped metal armature vs the square one their other cartridges use. It has a longish cantilever and tracks at 1.8 to 2 grams. The most compliant MCs I know of are the Van den Huls at around 18 um/mN and they track at between 1.3 and 1.5 grams. They have a short cantilever and use a light plastic cross shaped armature, a much lower effective mass. I find it highly unlikely the XV-1t has a compliance of 20 um/nM at 10 Hz considering its effective mass and tracking force.  

I had a van den Hul MC One Special (2nd from the bottom of the line) for about 2500 hours and the stylus lasted until is completely wore out and sounded consistent the entire time I had it.

VPI just took over distribution of them and were a pleasure to deal with and were very accommodative because of the overseas shipping issues were able to do a replacement instead of a factory remanufacture.  I live nearby their factory and they actually set it up.

I've also heard good things about the Frog, although you're getting into pretty expensive territory. Make sure you have a well matched phono stage.