MM, MC, or MI cartridge

Nagaoka MP500 is MI???  I always thought of Nagaoka cartridges as MM types.

I went to the Grado site to read about the Epoch3.  It seems like a high premium to pay vs their slightly lesser products for cocobolo wood case, gold coils, a sapphire cantilever, and a stylus shape that they are a bit mysterious in describing but might be elliptical. For about one-third the price, you can have jarrah wood and a boron cantilever (the Statement3).  However, the proof of the pudding is in the music each cartridge makes.

Hope RV does not mind us playing on his thread.

If the Decca Londons were available, that is what I would have bought.

But IME with the $13K Lyra Atlas SL, the top line, very pricey cartridge clearly justified its high price and lofty position. I moved up from a very nice Myajima Shalabi. The difference is SQ was shocking. By far, the most improvement of any upgrade in my system.

The Atlas is amazingly good. But I do need to give it a rest. And, to begin with, the Epoch3 is 4 times the output of the Atlas-1mV vs .23mV. So it seems like only that will make the Grado very dynamic. And I am pretty convinced that the Grado will sound very different. Maybe I will prefer it.

My system has recently made a tremendous change going from big box dynamic speakers to Quad 57s. The Quads powered by my AGD Audions have so much newly heard emotion that frequently brings me to tears!

I am very curious to hear what the Epoch3 does to the mids, etc.

At least one review calls the Grado, “the world’s best cartridge”. Let’s see how many grains of salt I take with that.

@rvpiano - Just in case you do peak in & look at this thread again... I really like the Virtuoso cartridge. It sounds wonderful in my system with a Thales Easy arm. I've tried other cartridges with this arm (MM/MI/MC) from my cartridge harem, & although they all sounded good after proper meticulous set-up, the humble Virtuoso shines with the type of music (electronic/electronica) I listen too most. 

Change of heart. 
 Hana ML finally broke in enough and sounds fantastic.

I'm glad to hear it (as, I'm sure, are you!)