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

So my generalization (that physical connectors DO make a difference with LOMCs) does not hold up 100% even in my experience. That’s another reason why I was wondering about your level of certainty.

Here on audiogon people always ask simple questions about cartridges, tonearms, turntables. Reading some of the questions I found that most of the people may not have an exceptional hearing ability to detect any difference between direct soldering or a wire with several collectors on the signal path, they are not reviewers and not trained to act like a computer. I don’t think I have an exceptional hearing ability at my age (45), but I can’t detect the difference! If some reviewers can detect a big difference at the age of 60-70 then I think they are super humans, well at least they are trained to detect it. The majority of audiophiles just repeat what reviewers said and as a result we have some funny statements that have nothing to do with reality. If it’s important for trained ears of reviewers with million dollar system, it’s not important for everyone. Maybe people will say that FR-64s or FR-66s is amazing tonearm, for the price for 66s it must be amazing (I don’t have this one, but I have long 66fx with FR-7f and fz LOMC and it’s an amazing tonearm to my ears with a removable shell and with a connector).

OP is a Technics user, this brand made tonearms with removable headshells, the best is probably EPA-100 mk2 (I have this one), their new reference tonearm is different, but there is a removable headshell. Long time ago they made EPA-500 with removable arm tubes (great feature too).

They did not try to make a new tonearm with a fixed headshell in the 21st century for some reason even for SL1000R.

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.

So it’s a benefit of a tonearm with removable headshell. But without this option of your Jelco on SOTA turntable (that can’t accommodate second tonearm) it will be a nighmare to swap a cartridge on a tonearm without removable headshell each time you want to play a MONO LP with dedicated mono cart.

Of course it would. One of the reasons I liked the Jelco TS-850 MKII as my arm of choice with the SOTA Sapphire.

No complaints. Works for my set-up.

And the fact I’m not a big believer in a phono stage with a mono switch vs a dedicated mono cart.

The 1200G table is sound and is a great building block to move upwards with say Timestep upgrades. Weak points of the 1200G are tonearm, bearing and power supply. All can be upgraded here - http://www.soundhifi.com/sl1200/Timestep%20Technics%20EVOke%20%20SL-1200GAE%202018.htm

@tomic601 i was thinking of upgrading my IC’s to phono preamp to amp. I just leaned about lower capacitance IC’s for TT’s, so they got me thinking if that could make an improvement. I have my 1200G on a Auralex isolation platforms for TT’s. Probably could upgrade that as their is a skip when I step too hard on this one section of my floor. 
Regarding cart @chakster, I appreciate the feedback. I’ve kind of built my system to accommodate the low output of the Cadenza Black and would like to stay in that performance range. To compare, I may order a cart from a place I can return if it doesn’t best the Cadenza.