Need A High Compliance Cartridge


To set up on a custom built low mass arm that is coming my way. Anyone have any candidates I can be on the look out for?

neonknight

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.

You can buy an Ortofon OM5e Super for $79.99 and then purchase an OM40 Stylus for $340.00. That's a high compliance low mass cart with an aggressive line contact nude stylus.  I sold one like this to a guy who had inherited an Infinty Black Widow and it worked out well for him.  My experience dates from the golden era of high compliance MM carts, before MCs became de riguer in audiophile setups.  My faves were Sonus Blue Label and ADC XLMs.  You can still score XLMs on eBay, and Jico makes a quality stylus for them.

Soundsmith carts are available in low, medium, and high compliance, plus have a pretty amazing story behind them - including a great rebuild policy. 

https://www.sound-smith.com/cartridge-compliancearm-mass-chart

@crustycoot Those are my 2 favorites carts from back in the day. I owned both. In fact I still have an XLM here somewhere but it's a later (MK3 perhaps) version. The originals were the best. Unfortunately after many people trashed them on the wrong arms, ADC lowered the compliance in MK2 and 3.

They are glorious sounding pieces though. MUCH better than the Shures of the day.