Sumiko Blackbird, Shindo and EAR

Thanks again. This is helpful.

Regarding more resolving carts, I would say that I am not too much in favor of extremely high-resolution systems...sometimes I feel like real life (e.g. live concerts) is lower definition than some of the systems we use to reproduce it. In the past, I was an amateur photographer. There was a Nikon lens that most people raved about...it was so high-def that it would allow you to spot micro-details about one's face that the naked eye would not be able to see, at the same distance. As I said, most people raved about it, but I thought it was way too high-def for me. I guess this kind of reasoning carries over to audio. So far, the blackbird produced the most real sound i've ever heard in my system...but I am sure there are many other carts that can do better than that.

FWIW, I ran a LOMC Ortofon cart (which is very low impedance) into my Monbrison for some time and loved it... then I tried a Blackbird and liked it _much_ better. Yes, a tiny bit of detail missing, but it had none of that funny, tizzy treble you sometimes get with LOMC. And is stellar in every other way, frankly.

And, yes, of course run it into the MM input...

That is precisely how I would describe the Blackbird...I just listened to the new Bob Dylan's LP, and found it totally amazing...very real

And, by the way, the Blackbird was substantially cheaper than the Ortofon (Kontra H).