Seek cartridge w/ following description :


Any recommendations for a moving coil that has some speed, excellent top end extension, an EVEN tonal balance, a hall perspective of row five to row fifteen from the front stage and a retail price tag not above $2000 ?
opus88
Raul, Ideally I would run the helikon with the well tempered arm. As far as the helikon versus the celebration I say change arms and stay with the helikon.
Dougdeacon...At rows 5 to 10, the Airy 2 is the most distant sounding ? I'm not making fun of your statement, I'm just sort of amazed ! Rows 5 to 10 are pretty close to things. To echo the old cliche, "it's all relative" ; that is, to the other two cartridges. No wonder I thought you may have unintentionally erred in your earlier staement. In any event, all very interesting. I'll have to take a more serious look here. Thank you.
They all have 'speed'--
Don't know anything about seating row positioning, except laid back vs. forward presentation--
And the trade-in price I paid still leaves me woozy since it's the most I've ever paid for a cart, and it only has 60 hrs on it, and it's in "only" a SME 309 w/o damping, but the sumiko celebration is certainly the best I've had. Aural memory disclaimer here. (I waited 50 hrs - after a functional check - before listening).

Upside-
Dynamics. Soft is soft, and loud is loud.
TB. W/ Alnico magnets, she loves electric instruments, and she really loves guitar amps. Other wise, very realistic timbre on acoustic instruments.
Channel balance/cantilever alignment. First rate.
Musicality. First rate. She'll pull you in, and you'll run through a whole side.
Packing. I thought I hated extravagence, but there's a cool surprise inside the cardboard box. Top flight stainless hex-head cap screws. The 27 pg. owners booklet was written in the US and in american english. No 10 other translations available in this one. It's a reference standard in installation and setup.
Nits. On the occasional record, and on the occasional track, she can be a little "barky" or "shouty" in a narrow frequency range in the upper mids/ presence range on dynamic passages.. Not even worried at this point... tuning, software, even the ginko cloud under the vpi is suspect.

Neutral to downside-
Dust magnet on the bottom side. Gets fuzzy fast.
Odd 1000 ohm loading. 47k is listenable, but doesn't like loud passages. The importer - sumiko - *still* hasn't adjusted the WebSite figure vs. the manual figure vs. the box labeling. Extraordinary sloppiness.
Output- 0.5mV Wish it were 0.75+... Straight into an ARC SP-9, it's between 12:30 and 3:30 on the volume.

That's about it.
if you can pick a deal for a Benz Ruby get it...one of the most balanced carts i know. from bass to treble very even top notch resolution but never clinical or too analytic. with dynamics to die for.