It costs me $100 a week to listen to vinyl


I know the math is obvious, but with the price of high-end moving coil cartridges averaging $5000.00 and with me averaging 20 hours a week of vinyl listening, I was disturbed to calculate that I am paying $100.00 per week for the privilege of listening to my own records?
I realise that doesn't include the depreciation on my equipment or electricity costs etc so please don't remind me of this?
How smug those who can bare digital must feel about this?
And how much worse for those committed to valve replacements in their pre and power amps?
How can we expect younger audiophiles with mortgages to pay, families to raise and education to provide for to afford the price of entry into an analogue system with such a potential maintenance impost?
I realise there are cheaper cartridges out there and the MMs are a bargain compared to the MCs, but once 'hooked' on vinyl, the desire to 'upgrade' is encouraged by the reviewers and the audio magazines continually announcing a newly anointed 'Kingpin' cartridge which is inevitably a moving coil with a price approaching the GDP of Namibia.
There seems to be no critical challenges to the assumed supremacy of MCs over MMs except for the lone crusade of Raul on this Forum?
Well I have taken the 'Raul challenge' and switched to a 15 year old MM cartridge which cost me $300. The 'running costs' of this are obviously a 'snip' compared to my $5000 MC but the best thing is the revelation that this moving magnet cartridge (and probably many more), are not only as good as some of the vaunted MCs in the market place, but better than most and sometimes by a considerable margin.
As Raul continues to implore us.........."try it, you may be surprised?"
128x128halcro
I have an Audio Technica AT150MLX, one of the better MM carts out there now. Yes, I know there are better--or certainly more expensive--MMs, but I'd still place it in the top 5% performance-wise.

Anyway, the replacement stylus (remember those?) is $180 for a gold-plated boron cantilever and nude MicroLine stylus, which I consider to be a very good value. At 1,000 hrs per stylus, that's eighteen cents per hour, or $3.60 for every 20 hours.
Dear Axel: +++++ " There is a rub, where can you find this stuff and be sure it is still in good nick?! " +++++

I already told you that for enjoy the MM alternative we have to have a positive attitude about and I told you too that that alternative is not a " plug&play " one.

In the last 18 months I bought more than 70 MM type cartridges ( in some models two and three samples ) and only in two oaccasion the cartridge was damaged, this is less than the 3% of what I bought.

My experiences about tell me that if we make a good research on what we are going to buy we can get a MM cartridge in good operation condition with almost mint stylus condition: this means several hours ( 2,000 at least ) to enjoy it before need a re-tip.

Btw, there are other " jewels " additional to the ones I mentioned to you.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.
I just auditioned a few mms:

Clearaudio Virtuoso wood w/SoundSmith re-tip;

Ortfon Super OM40;

Stanton 881 MKIIs;

Pickering XSV5000;

All have new styli. All are very listenable. Differences are easily discernable. The Pickering is flat out fantastic on my tweaked Dual 701. Proper matching (and cartridge setup), as with all things audio, is critical.

I'd not be embarrassed to have any lp fanatic experience the musicality/realism I hear (>> Bottlehead's new "Eros" >> custom Audio Note L3 Kits linestage >> AtmaSphere MA-1s) spinning vinyl through my rig.
Dear Axel: +++++ " lost some know-how with these babies, and the reviews don't help much either. " +++++

Today if you are a reviewer follower IMHO you are lost for say the least. IMHO the good times when an audio item review really help us almost gone.

Today I read TAS or STP almost only to know what's new and read the item reviews ( between lines ) to learn what not to do and sometimes to laugh ( in good shape ) and " cry " for so many and different non no-sense/non know-how advises.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.
Dear Mingles: Here you can read about:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1236947666&openflup&49&4#49

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.