Thoughts on moving from a 1200G to Sota Saphire or above

sbank, Crazily, I admit, I have multiple turntables up and running and just as many tonearms.  I use two with fixed headshells, Reed and Triplanar, and three with removable headshells.  When I want to experiment with different cartridges, I am drawn to the simplicity of removable headshells.  This feature offers the additional not insignificant advantage of experimenting with different headshells, if for no other reason than to establish a good effective mass vs compliance ratio to suit a particular cartridge.  For 10-20 years, I had swallowed the notion that fixed headshells were the purist and purest way to go, but my experiences over the last 10-12 years tell me I hear no problems related to flexing at the joint between headshell and tonearm.  The other consideration is that adding a headshell:arm wand interface adds another physical connector between cartridge and phono stage. To me, that would be more of an issue with removable headshells than structural instability. Hence, I tend to mount my lowest output LOMC cartridges in either the Triplanar or the Reed.  But I have broken even that rule of thumb with no discernible problems, I must admit, although I do continue to believe in direct-est connection to the phono stage; the fewer the interfaces, the better.  One caveat: all headshells do not securely fit all tonearm wands. You have to check the quality of the fit in each case.

the truly hardcore solder everything, no disconnects….

If you have many mono LPs, and want to swap regularly a mono cart and a stereo cart...that makes sense. But many of us would benefit more getting the best cart we can and using it all the time.

This is so stuid idea for people with many mono records, all they need is a dedicated tonearm for mono!

There is no such thing as “the best cart” and this is a big problem, without trying many cartridges peole have no idea which one is the best in their systems. For many people the most expensive and “the best” is the same thing. 


Additional headshell pins and even a DIN connector on a tonearm will not change the sound of a great tonearm/cartridge.

@chakster

This is so stuid idea for people with many mono records, all they need is a dedicated tonearm for mono!

Not stupid at all. I’ve been playing my mono LP’s the last couple days by installing my dedicated mono cart (and headshell) to my Jelco 850 arm.

I have a SOTA Sapphire, which cannot accept a second arm. I’m fine with using an arm with removable headshells to accomplish this goal. Quick switch, reset VTF & VTA, and ready to go.

I’m not getting rid of my SOTA, and do not really have room for a second table.

Chakster, I must say I am impressed by your level of certainty, at times.  You wrote, "Additional headshell pins and even a DIN connector on a tonearm will not change the sound of a great tonearm/cartridge."  How can you, or anyone, know this for all the different combinations that are possible?  I think the odds are that the connections are less audible with high output cartridges vs very low output MC cartridges, where I would worry more.  Since you are drawn to MM and MI cartridges with output voltages way higher than 1mV, that may account for your personal experience.  I can think of many cases where replacing a physical contact interface in the signal chain with a hard-wired connection did make an audible improvement in SQ.