Need A High Compliance Cartridge

Sound Smith has higher compliance versions of most of its cartridges.

I just purchased a London Decca Super Gold. No idea what the compliance is and no idea what your budget is, but the sound is incredible. Cost is around $3k - if its anywhere near your budget I would highly suggest checking it out. The design is totally different from any other cartridge out there. Design is from Decca way back in 1950's. As the one guy told me "we are building what Decca wouldnt'/couldn't back then.

@dmk_calgary I'm a huge fan of Deccas, but I wouldn't begin to know how to think of them in terms of compliance. The movement (particularly lateral movement) of the armature must be so small, I guess the proper description is "Compliance: not applicable"!

Van den Huls are high compliance. At new, they can be VERY tricky with tracking until the suspension breaks in a bit. Then they’re nice carts. I just had to stick with it and not give up. Used them with both low (VPI) and medium-high mass (FR64fx) arms - honestly didn’t notice much difference based on mass.

Most MI (like Grado and SoundSmith) and MM carts tend to be high compliance, because these designs do not feature the stiff suspension string and stout damper typical of most MC designs (they can also be more fragile due to this). Van den Hul is the exception, making MC’s with relatively high compliance.

Lyras are on the high side of medium compliance cartridges and generally do well with lower mass arms. You can always add a little mass. Soundsmith sells a really nice set of graded mass cartridge screws.