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
Tobes, ghdprentice, and sokogear- I’ve not noticed any problems with the VPI’s unipivot arm other than it being a little jiggly right when placing it on a record. However this doesn’t appear to be any big deal once you get used to it as ghdprentice indicates, But I am certainly no expert. Just someone who’d rather not go to the expense of a changing tonearms unless absolutely necessary. Buying a pricey cartridge is quite enough expense by itself. Mike |
Dear @skyscraper : " But I am certainly no expert... "" Certainly you are not but neither those gentlemans that posted is ok with unipivots, no matters what . I posted why unipivots are wrong tonearm design and @mijostyn that understand perfectly the why's posted too about. This is not if what we listen through we like it or not that's not the main issue the main issue is deeper than that and has to do with the task that any cartridge must does at microscopic and macro levels and that unipivots are unable to hold the cartridge to fulfill its needs at those levls. Yes, unipivot can works but in wrong way and this is the issue. The matters is know-how and common sense not if we like it. Btw, the Graham was a copy-cat of Audiocraft unipivot AC3000: @tobes do you know Audiocraft changed it by the 3300?
R. |
Raul, I went back and found your post on this thread where you explained how unipivots create too much unstabillity for the cartridge/stylus in the record groove. I missed that entry somehow. Appreciate your explanation there and just above. Thanks. Sokogear, I’ll have to make do with the unipivot for the foreseeable future, since I’m now wanting a pricey cartridge that will stretch the budget a bit, plus not being wealthy. I’ll also be going with the phonostage built into my Luxman 507uX Mk2 integrated amp. Mike |
I never claimed to be an expert, just an end user, I left the expertise to Bob Graham (an actual engineer) ;-)
There are certainly similarities, but also important design differences. So what? The point of my statement above was simply that not all unipivot designs feel unstable - they certainly don't "jump all over the place" - nor are they all difficult to use (even with no experience). Setup and use of the Graham arms was a 'piece of cake'. Analog playback is imperfect by nature, different designs make their choices in dealing with the imperfections. In practice there is 'more than one way to skin a cat' ;-) Peace and back to the subject under discussion. |
