Cartridge upgrade for VPI Scoutmaster

Sonofjim-
Do you find you hear a substantial and cost-effective upgrade going from the JMW9 to the 10.5i? Or is the improvement MAINLY in ease of set-up/use.

I agree that the VPI arm is actually very good and the 10.5i is excellent. Triplanar and SME cannot compare.

Srwooten,
The 10.5i is an excellent arm from a functional and sonic standpoint. Sonically, I also enjoyed the 9 sig and with enough patience I think it can provide very comparable results. Whether it's cost effective for you is a personal decision. It was for me. Considering the importance of diligent set up and tweaking, anything that makes that easier and more appealing is cost effective to me. Another cheaper item that makes accurate setup easier is the Mint LP tractor. Try one of these for $99 and you may stop thinking about the 10.5i, at least for a while.

>>12-04-08: Azmoon
I agree that the VPI arm is actually very good and the 10.5i is excellent. Triplanar and SME cannot compare.<<

Please list all of the cartridges you've used along with the specific SME tonearms to support this assertion.

This should be interesting.

I'm pretty impressed with the Airy 3. The dynamics are incredible. This is a very enjoyable cart. Very spacious, clean, and defined. Well rounded, though I am still getting it set up "right". I set the VTF at 2 grams as per the original owners suggestion (same TT and arm) after some experimenting. I am running it single ended into a Pass Labs Xono phono stage (the only way INTO the Xono), and balanced out to the X-1 pre. Cables are HT Magic. Cart loading I set to 199.36 ohms initial as per my last cart. I'll tweak this after I get the cart set up physically correct, and post what settings seem to work best in my rig to my ear. I’m also working on setting the Azimuth. I have some voltmeters ordered online to help me out with this. I set the VTA almost level (a little bit negative) for 180-gram vinyl.