Advice needed on MC cartridges

@skyscraper , I am pretty sure the VPI gimbal arm is a direct swap for the unipivot one. They use the same or close to the same base. If you are stuck with the unipivot for now you need to find the highest compliance cartridge you can get to work in that arm. Most of the high output cartridges have a higher compliance. For MC cartridges the VDH Frog Gold and MC-One have the highest compliance I know of. For less money the Ortofon LVB 250 2M Black is a good option. Even less the Grado 1042 .

Raul's assessment of unipivot arms is not overly harsh. They are unstable which you notice every time you lift the arm. It is much harder and more expensive to design and build an arm with multiple bearings. The party line is that they have lower friction. First of all friction only matters in the vertical direction. The friction of a jeweled needle bearing is essentially zero. Zero + Zero = Zero. Smoothness is far more important than friction. Any noise in the bearing will be transmitted to the cartridge. If a horizontal bearing has more friction you just lower the anti skating.

A gimbal arm has two bearings defining the vertical direction and two the horizontal direction. A gimbal arm can not rotate along it's axis. The rotational effective mass of a tonearm is very low. It takes very little to twist the arm. Your arm tries to deal with this problem with those out rigger weights in back. They increase the arm's rotational effective mass to keep forces applied by the groove on the stylus from rotating to arm. In the process they increase the arm's moment of inertia which is a bad thing to do to a device that has to accurately follow the undulations of your typical record. This is trying to fix a problem with another problem. The makers of the Two best unipivot arms in the market, the Basis Superarm and the Graham Phantom Elite go to great lengths to stabilize their arms. The Basis adds a second bearing and the Graham a system of opposing magnets. They are an improvement but I personally will not buy either arm. Arms that I would buy include the Schroder CB which I own, The Schroder LT, The Reed 2G, the Tri Planar and the SME V, all in their 9" versions I might add. Increasing the length of an arm for a few degrees in tracking error is worse than counter productive. 

Secretguy, thjanks for the recommendation of the Denon. I’ll add it to the list of cartridges to research.

Jim, Thanks, Do you think it would be detrimental to the physical structure of an MC cartridge, perhaps the needle or cantilever, to have it on a unipivot arm or is it just that it would perform better on a different type arm.

Mjostyn, pardon my ignorance, but what is meant by the "compliance" of a cartridge?  I was starting get the impression to LOMC’s performed better than HOMC's, but since you mention having a compliance factor to consider with a unipivot arm, may send me back to the drawing board.

Thank you for your explanation of what constitutes a gimbal arm and how they work. I’ll look up the arms you mention, along with the nineteen cartridges suggested by everyone so far. Hope i don’t get an additional case of sticker shock. Acclimating to the thought of a possible $3000 MC cartridge purchase is unsettling enough for one day, and I’ve yet to research the MI type cartridges.

Thank you for the education and taking the time to post all the above information . I’ve been learning a lot so far from you and everyone else.

Mike

The arm you have is not going to hurt a better cartridge. AJ Conti the genius behind the Basis Vector arms ( sadly RIP ) IMO probably wrung the best sonics out of a Unipivot. Look, Mijo absolutism aside, many, many audiophiles w unipivots and high end cartridges are quite happy with the musical enjoyment they provide….

But let’s get real, most of the arms Mijo mentions are > $6 K and up….

@secretguy +1 on the Denon 301 mk II. A really nice LOMC for the money.

Dave

I did look up the Schroder CB mijostyn owns and it was in that price range you mention. He’s fortunate to have one. Thanks for the reassurance a good quality MC cartridge can work on a unipivot arm. I can save up to upgrade to a pricey cartridge in a reasonable amount of time, but although I'd like to, it’s unlikely I’ll ever be swimming in the deep end of the audiophile pool.

Mike