AT-95ML on a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon

That's the data from Pro-Ject directly.  Effective arm mass: 6.0g

That's not including the weight of a cartridge or the mounting hardware (the Debut Carbon has no headshell, the cart mount directly to the arm). Everything said and done it'll probably be around 13-14g.

I think you've given me the answer I was looking for. I've been getting the feeling that this is a really nitpicky thing that I likely won't notice and even if it is noticeable it will likely be eclipsed by the gains from going to a quieter, overall better table anyways.

I think I should stop over thinking it and just throw the VM95ML and, barring absolutely terrible performance, just call it a day.

You have to multiply the compliance on a Japanese cartridge by 1.7 before you calculate. That 6 gram arm and that cartridge are a perfect 10.92 hz. BTW, adding a weight to the arm will change the resonant lower and you don’t want to do that!

http://mh-audio.nl/Calculators/RF.html

I have both cartridges (95ml and the 540ml) and use a Jelco 250ST arm which is medium compliance. Both preform excellent on the vinyl. Both sound different to each other. The 95 is clean and crisp but the 540 amps it up the level quite a bit. I was surprised actually. A debut carbon won't give you much of this realization. If I were you I would suggest a low level, high end table used in good condition. Would allow for the next step up on the speakers and preamp if and when you are ready.

Yogiboy, the given compliance of the cartridge, according to AT, is 20 at 100Hz.  I multiplied by 2 to give a rough approximation of the compliance at 10 Hz, which gives 40 cu. I don't disagree with you at all, but the equation softens the effect of changing M or C, because you are taking the square root of the product.  So, rather large changes in either parameter don't have as much effect on the resonant frequency as one might expect, which, coupled with the fact that we don't really know the compliance of any one sample of any cartridge, is why I take a laissez-faire attitude toward the whole thing. You probably could increase effective mass by 6g and still be within a reasonable lower bound of F for the ensemble.  There is just no reason to do it.

@lewm Thanks for the correction. I was doing the calculation with the static compliance spec. My bad!