Best investment; cartridge or line stage?

Great question. in general, the way I look at investing in analog: you must balance the quality of the turntable, tone arm, and cartridge with the phonostage. Typically after an upgrade my investment in tt + tone arm + cartrige = the investment in the phonostage. Your stuff looks fairly balanced at this point… maybe the cartrige look a bit light..

For much of my life the phonostage was holding back the performance of my tt. I had bought a stereophile best cheap $200 (1980) phonostage… and it sounded simply terrible. I quickly traded up and up to an AudioResearch PH 2… then upgraded over and over. It wasn’t until the PH8 that I felt it stopped getting in the way (at the time I had a VPI Aries / Van den Hull Frog $5K + $2.5K.. something like that). Now my table is around $20K and so is my phonostage. Very well matched.

I have known folks to put a $12K cartridge on a $6K tt with a $10K phonostage to great effect. Or a $12K cartridge on a $5K tt with a $3K phonostage and I was sure there was a huge amount of sound quality missing. Anyway, no hard answer, but from my experience, do not go cheap on the phonostage.

So, you are considering a new phonostage? Keeping what I said, I guess, I would do a very significant cartridge upgrade, with an eye to upgrade the phonostage at some future date.

Except the OP asked linestage vs cartridge, which seemed an odd dilemma.

@milo0812 ,

Did you mean phonostage, not linestage?

@thecarpathian phonostage.. thanks for asking clarifying question. +@lewm

Replace the Cartridge.

Existing cartridge is an Elliptical shape.

Stylus Shape

Select a cartridge with an advanced stylus shape: SAS; Shibata; Line Contact; Microline; ... (other variations) providing greater contact with the groove walls: better for fidelity, less stylus wear and less groove wear. Extra Cost: when advanced stylus shape’s longer life is considered, is not such a big difference.

Cantilever Material:

greater stiffness relates to better performance, and in my experience improved bass. Many cantilevers are aluminum, I prefer Boron. Harder materials, typically crystals, cost more than I want to spend. The Sapphire I own and past crystals, if you concentrate .... but they have not been obviously better. However the beryllium cantilever of the Shure V15Vxmr was the best bass I ever had, obvious to all. The Thorens TD124 TT was also instrumental for that.

Imaging:

ALL Imaging is Phantom, therefor always check to see two factors that help provide better Imaging: greater channel separation and tighter channel balance. Not just overall image width, more importantly the combination reveals the location of instruments and vocalists more precisely, everywhere, all with greater distinction.

I look for 30db separation combined with 0.5db balance.

Sound Characteristics:

Prefer, not Better. Aside from Imaging, the sound characteristics are subjective, people describe what they prefer, often calling it better, but ....... This is the hardest part when finally selecting.

Stylus Life:

Note: stylus life expectancy in this article is based on technical specifications from Jico: actual life is much longer, the life expectation differences based on stylus shape remain relative

https://www.sound-smith.com/articles/stylus-shape-information

Alignment Skills and Tools:

A few inexpensive tools, and acquired alignment skills are needed to mount any cartridge: new you install or eventual replacement of OEM pre-mounted cartridge. You, a friend, a shop: watch, learn, practice, it’s about being careful, not as difficult as many people think. Removable headshells are much easier to work with than installing cartridges on a fixed arm.