Best MM for the money or?

Hi Qdrone,

There are a couple of obscure moving iron cartridges from the past that will rival many moving coils, but finding one in NOS condition at this point would border on a miracle. That said, Soundsmith's new "Voice" is a moving iron cartridge that is being incredibly well received. Frank Schröder, who makes the wonderful tonearm, commented that it is the finest, or near the finest, cartridge that he has ever heard. (I don't want to misquote him, but that is the gist of his comment on another forum.) In any event, that one may be well worth the effort to seek out.

Regards,

I would consider a Moving Coil Transformer . I use an Ultimate [heavily modified ] with a Quicksilver [+23dB] or a homemade - Jensen JT-44K-DX based [+20dB] - MC Transformer into the MM Phono Input of the Ultimate . Both are rather inexpensive especially if you are handy and do your own construction . Do a Search of Audio 10 for construction details .

Background noise will be low enough for your Monster Genesis 2000 cartridge . A very fine sounding cartridge indeed . You could also set your MC Input to 47k and run a lower gain Transformer [+15dB?] . IMHO almost all Low Output MC Cartridges in general sound better than any MM Cartridge I have heard .

Actually, Chinese tubes tend to be very quiet in a phono section, but their life expectancy is pretty short. But for the price, you could pick up 10 or more for the price of a good pair of NOS tubes.

In my experience, I have also found that Chinese tubes don't have the "air" and openness or the high-end extension of NOS tubes.