What is the “World’s Best Cartridge”?


I believe that a cartridge and a speaker, by far, contribute the most to SQ.

The two transducers in a system.

I bit the bulllet and bought a Lyra Atlas SL for $13K for my Woodsong Garrard 301 with Triplanar SE arm. I use a full function Atma-Sphere MP-1 preamp. My $60K front end. It is certainly, by far, the best I have owned. I read so many comments exclaiming that Lyra as among the best. I had to wait 6 months to get it. But the improvement over my excellent $3K Mayijima Shilabi was spectacular-putting it mildly.

I recently heard a demo of much more pricy system using a $25K cartridge. Seemed to be the most expensive cartridge made. Don’t recall the name.

For sure, the amount of detail was something I never heard. To hear a timpani sound like the real thing was incredible. And so much more! 
This got me thinking of what could be possible with a different kind of cartridge than a moving coil. That is, a moving iron.

I have heard so much about the late Decca London Reference. A MI and a very different take from a MC. Could it be better? The World’s Best? No longer made.

However Grado has been making MI cartridges for decades. Even though they hold the patent for the MC. Recently, Grado came out with their assault on “The World’s Best”. At least their best effort. At $12K the Epoch 3. I bought one and have been using it now for about two weeks replacing my Lyra. There is no question that the Atlas SL is a fabulous cartridge. But the Epoch is even better. Overall, it’s SQ is the closest to real I have heard. To begin, putting the stylus down on the run in grove there is dead silence. As well as the groves between cuts. This silence is indicative of the purity of the music content. Everything I have read about it is true. IME, the comment of one reviewer, “The World’s Best”, may be true.
 

 

mglik

@solypsa , Yes, I have and recently. I ordered a pellet grill from the BBQ Guys, a Memphis Grill. The crate was dented in one corner. I took a picture of the box with the delivery person standing next to it. I then dissected the crate taking pictures along the way. There was over $700 in damage. Memphis grill had the parts to me in three days I gave the itemized receipt to the the freight company and had a check two weeks later. You have to be right on top of it or you can get screwed for sure.

@atmasphere , daveyf hyperbolic? Not on your life. We all know your hearing is in the trash by 8 kHz😁

Dear @mijostyn  : I know that rigth now you are enttilted with the very low impedance cartridges and current mode phonolinepreamps and that you really like your MSL.

 

Things are and I could think you already " hear "/read about  Top Wing cartridges that time to time few audiophiles posted about in Agon and I just remember it and maybe is " your " time to listen it, maybe not is up to you.

Here two reviews and somewhere I read that outperforms MSL: who really knows?. First the top of the line and then the next down step:

 

 

 

 

I am a believer when it comes to expensive cartridge purchases to be only from a authorized dealer. In my case, after I had bought the cartridge from my local dealer, I noticed after about a week that the cantilever was skewed. My dealer agreed and took the cartridge back to the manufacturer’s rep for correction under warranty, which was done. BUT If i had bought a gray market cartridge, I believe I would have been in the cold when an issue like this occurs.

@atmasphere My experience at WBF was typical of a lot of forums that are run by hobbyists as literal soap boxes for their POV’s. I contributed a lot of content there initially, but was soon in their bad books, simply because I did NOT agree with their guru and his BS. My thread about the new Alsyvox speakers drew the most ire, mainly due to the fact that the resident horn lovers felt threatened. To that, the agenda of the owners is pretty clear. Personally, I think the while forum is now a total joke, so if that’s hyperbolic..so be it.

@rauliruegas , Sorry Raul, not a fan. A $16,000 cartridge better be using something other than an aluminum cantilever with an antique high mass stylus mounting system seen in cartridges 40 years ago because the low mass resins we use to glue them in place today were not available yet. Even the higher end DS cartridges use a better stylus mounting system than the one seen in the "Top" Wing. Yes, I really like the MSL/Seta L combination, but there are also two more top flight cartridges coming, the MC Diamond, which I know you like and the Lyra Atlas Lambda SL, which I know I'll like. Which one will I Like best? It really does not mater, but if one should fall behind I'll sell it and try another. The plan is to keep three available so that if something should happen to my financial situation I have enough cartridge to get me to the end of my life or hearing, whichever comes first. 

I have been talking to Frank Schroder. He is going to make me a new CB with a Rosewood arm wand. I am going to make a new plinth for the Sota using the same species of wood. It will extend down to the surface of the granite cutting off that low frequency feedback problem I was dealing with, and it will look a lot better. I will use the exact same chiseled finger joints you see in the maple skirt which look a lot nicer than Sota's radiused off version,

 

Raul, I read the Suzuka review. In one sentence, I got the impression these are Low Output Moving Magnets. How else to account for the statement that the stylus is user replaceable? But elsewhere the reviewer states he set capacitance at 300 ohms, which could just be a typo, but one that should have been edited out prior to publication. Alternatively to a LOMM, which seems unlikely, the uniqueness of the cartridge might owe to using a single magnet and coreless coils in an LOMC , but where is the brilliant invention? AT has been making amorphous core LOMCs for a while, which is probably a better idea. The reviewer also suggests that using a coreless coil makes the transduction more efficient, where the opposite is true and probably accounts for the very low output.