Advice needed on MC cartridges
I’ve an Ortofon Black 2M cartridge on my VPI Classic 2 turntable, It’s a moving magnet type cartridge with a Shibata stylus and cost about $700 when purchased. I could easily be wrong, but am under the impression that the Ortofon 2M Black is about as good as it gets with MM cartridges and if I wished to upgrade I’d need to be thinking about moving into a MC, moving coil, type.
So I’ve been trying to learn something about moving coil cartridges and what differences or improvements in sound quality might be obtained by using one. My integrated amp, a Luxman 507uX Mk2, has a built in phono stage and can play either type,
Generally speaking, how much more would need to be spent on a MC cartridge before a noticeable, or significant improvement, might be heard in sound quality over the Ortofon 2M’s performance? What improvements in performance might you obtain using one a better quality MC over the Ortofon 2M Black? And third, what MC cartridges might you recommend that would fit in performance and budget wise with a system composed of the above equipment plus Magico A3 speakers. My other equipment is a Marantz Ruby CD/SACD player and a Shunyata Denali Hydra power conditioner.
I’ve never heard a MC cartridge in use so would be interested in following your advice and recommendations to see if I can find a dealer or someone that might be able to demo one so I can hear what the differences might be in performance. Thank you for any responses or suggestions
Mike
Your Luxman has very good design and canhandle that level of quality performance with no problem. Obviously that in any room/system always exist weak links in the system audio chain and yours is no exception. Example; is it your TT/tonearm the optimum for any of those cartridges?. No, it's not but can works and latter on you can make the up-grades need it.
What's clear is that with your today system you will know for sure the high quality differences for the better.
R. |
Ghdprentice, thanks again for the clarifications and advice.. I’d really like to hear your ’’Frog" cartridge. Oldrooney, thank you for the differences you describe in listening to either type of cartridge. Mr_m;, appreciate your +1 on the Hana ML cartridge. Seems to be lots of fans of that MC cartridge, and good reviews from what I’ve read so far. I’ve still to read up on every cartridge someone’s mentioned here so far, but hopefully will get on that today. Raul, I very much appreciate you taking the time to answer my exact questions. That’s been helpful in determining how much I should be budgeting for an upgrade and what would be appropriate for the system components I do have. Just out of curiosity what are examples of turntable(s)/tonearm(s) you might feel would be optimal for one of the more expensive cartridges. It’s possible with a little saving I might acquire one of those MC’s in the $3000 range that you indicate could "put me in a different league". I’m not planning on upgrading my VPI Classic 2 any time soon, or ever, unless I win the lottery, but a person can dream. Again thank you vey much for your helpful input and links. Mike
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Dear @skyscraper : Options on TT/tonearms are almost endless and every one has his own preferences in TT and preferences on tonearms.
With those kind of LOMC cartridges what you will need is to change the unipivot tonearm design by a VPI 3-D bi-pivot one.
R. |
@skyscraper : because unipivot designs are totally unstable and unaccurated to handle the cartridge tracking needs to the cartridge can pick up the recorded information in the LP grooves and avoid developed added distortions for that tonearm unstabilities. probably unipivots is the worst kind of tonearm design not even for entry level cartridges. VPI has gimball tonearm designs. R. R. |
