Back in 2010, motivated by Raul’s monster thread (yes, it was even too big back then), I bought a handful of vintage MM carts off eBay, just to try when I had some time. They were all reasonably priced or downright cheap, which of course is one of the beauties of MMs compared to MCs. I mounted a few and thought were were OK, nothing too special. The Grace F9 was definitely a keeper but the others, not so much, probably more because of mismatches with my tonearm at the time than anything else.
The gem of this small horde was a brand new ADC TRX-2 that I never opened. I wasn’t sure at first whether I was going to keep or resell it, so I put it in the drawer and then just forgot about it. Reading this thread brought it back to mind so I mounted it last week. Whoa! this thing is remarkably good! Fluid, dynamic, detailed, musical, it pretty much does it all. Maybe it doesn’t have quite the refinement and openness of my top MCs like a Benz TR or A90, but it comes remarkably close and adds something organic that they don’t really have. And the soundstage is huge. I had to track down the right headshell first because it is very compliant. The ADC LMG-1 at 7.6g is just right.
So thank you @fjn04 for this thread, and @rauliruegas for cluing me into this cartridge way back when. I’m going to dig around in the drawer and see what other neglected MM treasures I might find.
