I have several Grado and Soundsmith. The sweet spot for me was Soundsmith Zephyr MKiii (not the ES), which you can get with a couple hundred hours for 750 or so. Unlike most, I find lower hours used cartridges worthy, especially since they are broken in. And if you need a Soundsmith rebuild for some reason you are still in a decent price range. I even bought one of these once after the seller shipped to Soundsmith for an "all clear" from them. Good company to deal with I've found.
High Performance Moving Iron Cartridge Candidates?
I have decided to simplify my analog set up a bit. removed the fussy cartridges and SUT's, and am down to one external phono stage, and the internal one in my Trinov preamp.
The Trinov preamp is MM only, and I don;t want to use a step up or headamp with it. So that means high output moving coil or a MM type cartridge.
I read on these boards that a MI cartridge can have lower moving mass than a moving coil I would like to experiment.
What are the viable candidates these days? I imagine most vintage ones do not have OEM styli available still. The Soundsmith ones are interesting, but get very spendy. This is meant to be a casual cartridge for me, but I will spend some money on it. Just not Air Tight or Koetsu money.
What are other choices? Not typically fond of Grado I heard in the past. Otherwise I think Nagaoka is the only other one I know of?
- ...
- 46 posts total
@jasonbourne71 That is my other option. I have looked at HOMC versions of cartridges from Dynavector and Benz Micro. Since Excel built many HOMC cartridges in the past for companies, I wonder how much the changed in the innards with their Hana HOMC offering. One thing I remember from a number of years ago is a needle drop a friend had that was made on an AR turntable with a Shure V15MR on it. Sounded very nice! I would be open to a V15 but I wonder if the OEM cantilevers can be retipped? Arent they a beryllium tube? So I doubt a new diamond can be fitted to them, and that leaves something like a Jico stylus which is supposed to be good but not the same. If I go that route then I might as well find an appropriate Shure body right? Are the V bodies the best of the bunch or were there differences? |
- 46 posts total