Top 3 high compliant mm/mi cartridges

Hello Raul,
I agree with you that too much is made about cu and mass. It is often hard to predict the outcome of a highish cu cart in a heavier arm. I never owned a Sonus cart and therefore never tried one on my Sonus arm. That might be interesting, especially with your results on a much heavier arm. On the other hand, my M20FL Super seems to sound sluggish on my med/heavy arms. Maybe it's the combination, but it seems to sound much better on an 11g Alphason 100S or a 8g Unitrac.

Light weight/low mass arms usually don't sound good with heavy, low cu carts. At least that has been my experience. Resonance goes toward the audible band and the structure of the light arm can't handle the mass or energy.

I didn't mean to imply that strict rules had to be observed, matching cu to mass. With a good tracking cart of 20cu, a wide range of arms can be used successfully. I found this to be true with my Stanton 980. Results were somewhat different with the M20FL. It seemed sound thicker, although I didn't even try the 980 in my heaviest arm.
Regards, fleib

Dear Lew, I would love to read about your impression reg.
AKG 8 ES and other MM carts 'waiting' for your time.
But now your project with SP 10 mk3 is at last finished
we may hope to read less 'technical-theoretical' speculations and more musical 'reports'. I know that you are also a musician and I have the inclination to trust
more a musician then a technician.
Regarding AKG carts . According to AKG the problem was the
suspension ( 'rubber ring'), say, hardening as function of
time. To avoid probable liability AKG destroyd all their
stocks of carts and styli. I have never heard about 'coil
problem'. So even those who own the 'NOS' stylus have no
quarantee that their example will be ok (sorry).
So it seems that those who lack the stylus should follow
T_bone's suggestion (04-23-11) while we all may hope that
some or all retip services are also able to repair the suspension. If some of us is confronted with the coil problem the solution is obvious: bay an other corpus.
I posted three of them + a broken stylus (pace T_bone) to
HIFI79STUDIO and ordered the cheapest retip: aluminium cantilever with a elliptical stylus (100 Euro). If the 'pudding' is 'tasteful' I may try boron cantilever with some more 'exotic' stylus.
Regards,

Dear Nandric, My memory for the cause may be faulty, but it is demonstrably true that many of the AKG cartridges that come up for sale on eBay are described as "one channel is dead" or "dead but stylus is good". A faulty stylus assembly should not cause one channel only to go completely dead, as far as I know. So there has to be some other explanation for the plethora of defective AKG cartridges. Ne c'est pas? I thought I had read that there was an issue with internal wiring, but I certainly could be wrong.

Dear Raul, Since you mentioned the MC2000, let me also say how much I am enjoying your Ortofon MC7500, in a 10.5-inch Reed tonearm on my SP10 Mk3 (finally). And now, back to MM/MI cartridge discussions.

Dear Lew, I need first to complete the statement I made.
I see often my omissions after I posted my contribution . My sentence should be: ' I have the inclination to trust more a musician then a technician ( +) in musical matters'.
The AKG carts are rather cheap on the German ebay so the
possible 'coil problem' is much more easy to solve then the
stylus problem. I already bought 3 AKG 8ES 'super nova' for
less then 50 Euro. Anyway I hope that one of the 3 will
have 'fantasic coils'.
Regards,