Turntable upgrade recommendations: SME vs AMG vs Technics vs other

@drbond , The calculator is a rough guide as cartridge compliance can vary even with the best manufacturers. You tune the tonearm and cartridge with a test record by adding mass to the head shell. Starting out with a tonearm on the light side is always the best thing to do then you add mass till you get the lateral resonance down between 8 and 10 Hz. There are many types of head shell weights available. Soundsmith makes a very nice set of graded cartridge screws that work great with SME arms.

@edgewear , The Anna Diamond's achilles heal is that it is very low compliance which means you have to use a more massive arm and tolerate accelerated record wear. The vinyl has to do more work to move the stylus. But, it's motor is excellent. Very few cartridges can attain the low distortion levels of the Anna Diamond. The Verismo is the culmination of all this research. It is a more compliant cartridge with an ultra low resonance body and the low distortion levels of the Anna. The price is also a bit more realistic. To my mind only Lyra and MSL make cartridges as sophisticated. 

@rauliruegas, I had noticed that the pricing of the Verismo with diamond cantilever is about the same as the regular MC Anna with boron, so that is indeed a positive step in contrast to the mostly upward trend in high end audio pricing.

Have you heard it yet? If so, how does it compare sonically to MC Anna and A95? I have both and sonically these are pretty far apart in character, despite similar motor, cantilever/stylus and SLM titanium body. The A95 is very fast and neutral, while Anna sound more voluptuous and colourful. Sonically they seem to reflect their ‘body shapes’, which might suggest the Verismo should be somewhere in between, adopting the strengths of both models with the added advantage (presumably) of a diamond cantilever. Does that make sense?

Dear @edgewear  : Maybe you have to own it. It's unique because almost all was improved including suspension damping. Ortofon never put in the market a cartridge with the Verissimo " credentials " just as a MK2 " something ".

I had the opportunity to listen with a new  audio friend that as you owns the Anna and I owned the 95.

For me the " colourful " was and is a Anna design characteristic that in some ways was a departure from the other cartridges when started in the market. For me too the Verissimo has a more natural color the MUSIC color and at the same time has a natural balance over the frequency range.

Asd with the 95 the Verissimo is different performer than the Anna, better quality performer a little more near to the live MUSIC,

R.

Dear @drbond  : I think that you don't need to buy that 30/2 when the new 15 with the V tonearm can gives you at least 90% of a new 30/2 quality performance.

Now it's a hard call against a new 30/2 but vs a 27 year old 30/2 the call is different because it's not that SME can check up the used TT but that through all those 27 years SME made it a lot of refinements to its TTs with out notice for the customers.

Next is a review of the 15 but with the 309 tonearm that's inferior quality performer than the V class levels:

R,

I would love to hear or even read about a head to head comparison between the MC2000 and the Verissimo. Not at all because I dream the MC2000 is better but only because that would be a great way to dissect out the improvements that nearly 30 years of tinkering have wrought. It would have to be done on top of the line equipment and using the exact same devices (tonearm, turntable, phono, etc) in each case. If I could not be present myself, it would be great to have the evaluations of 2 or 3 experienced listeners. MF is in a position to do these sorts of comparisons, but he probably wouldn’t, because of vested financial interests. The trick would be to find a mint NOS MC2000. For that matter, the comparison could be done with any of several of the many models that lie chronologically between the MC2000 and the Verissimo. Raul has already intimated that the A95, Anna, and Verissimo are quite different sounding, one from the other. Yet they are only separated by a couple of years of development.