SOTA NOVA, HR-X VPI, Technics 1200G recommendations?

Chakster is right, compliance tells you nothing about the sonic characteristics of a cartridge. The problem is the resonance frequency of the moving mass of the stylus/cantilever/coil, magnet or iron assembly and it's suspension. You have to keep it up over the audio band or you get bright peaky performance. The heavier the moving mass, the stiffer you have to make the suspension. Because moving coil cartridges usually have higher mass assemblies their suspension has to be stiffer. There are some moving coil cartridges with very light moving masses now using plastic crosses for the coils instead of a metal and very powerful rare earth magnets. They tend to be very expensive, read overpriced. IMHO moving magnet and MI cartridges tend to be a much better value. Some would argue their performance can be better than moving coil cartridges. In terms of signal to noise ratio and therefore dynamics there can be no argument that they are better. Other qualities it depends who you talk to. 

The phono cartridge and tonearm combine to make a spring mass system.  The phono cartridge and tonearm must compliment each other to yield the ideal system natural frequency.  That ideal system natural is between 8 and 11 Hz.  Once you decide on a tonearm then you must narrow your selection of phono cartridges to compliment the tonearm you have selected.  You can use this equation: Resonant Frequency = 1000 / (2 x π x √ (M x C)) or easier to use the cartridge resonance evaluator available on various websites.  Take my SME 309/Soundsmith Zephyr combo for example.  Tonearm has an effective mass of 9.5g.  The Zephyr has a mass of 12.2g.  I add about 0.5g for the screws for a total mass of 22.2g.  The Zephyr has a compliance of 10 micrometer/millinewton or 0.00001 cm/dyne.  Use the magic calculator or plug these values into the formula and my tonearm/cartridge system has a resonance of 11 Hz.  Right in the ideal zone.  The Zephyr comes with some ceramic rods to add mass if needed.  So, if I wanted to lower the resonance to 10 Hz, for example I could add 2 grams of mass to the headshell.  Why is the resonance range so important?  The 8-11 Hz range keeps the tonearm away from the music lower limit of 20 Hz (the modulating grooves can excite the tonearm) but also above rumble frequencies.  If a tonearm/cartridge system is mismatched poorly you can actually experience your tonearm moving up and down and cartridge skipping.  From the equation you can see that a low mass tonearm/cartridge needs high compliance (spring rate) and a high mass tonearm/cartridge needs low compliance.  

Remember, the first rule of Engineering is to watch your units.  Well, we had a professor in college that said the first rule of Engineering is "You can't push a rope."  But if your units are mixed you can get into trouble very quickly.  Also note that a warped record will have a rotational frequency of 1.8 Hz.  If the tonearm/cartridge natural resonance is down below 5 Hz, exciting things can happen when it tries to track over that warp.

For anyone who has ever tried playing the Telarc record of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Symphony knows that if the tonearm/cartridge combo isn’t right, that tonearm is going to skate across the record when the cannons fire.  Very exciting record. 

And don't forget that you can't use dynamic compliance measured at 100Hz (all Japanese cartridges) for calculations! 

All calculations must be made with 10Hz compliance figure only. So the compliance must be converted first from 100Hz to 10Hz. Japanese manufacturers never publish compliance figure at 10Hz.