High end cartridge made in USA?

Daveyf: For UK-made MC carts, I was thinking of Rega, Linn, and Goldring; I'd forgotten about Decca. So yeah, the UK is pretty well represented here.

As for your fundamental question, you could turn the question around: Why did the moving coil cartridge catch on so early in other countries? After all, the low output makes the signal path more vulnerable to noise from the extra gain required, the step-up transformer adds cost, complexity, and cabling, and when the stylus wears out, you have to replace the whole cartridge or send it away for retipping.

I mentioned that MC carts started to catch on in the US in the '70s, but Ortofon invented it in 1945 and in Japan, the Denon DL103 came out in 1962, where it became the broadcast standard. In the US, it was Stanton and Shure. In the UK, Decca?

I think it comes down to homefield technology and cultural preference. US users liked the idea of fewer components and easy needle replacements.

The history of the MC is interesting, however, I do not think it explains the lack of manufacturing today in the US. BTW, I believe the new Linn MC...the Kandid is in fact made in Japan by Lyra. Is there still a UK manufactured MC besides the Decca and the Rega? ( which I presume are still manufactured there)

I am so old that I even remember the questions like : 'is
the German mathematics better than Russian or American?'
Not to mention the physical science. At present I am glad
to see when anything is better made as in Germany. Well I
am 100% sure that Japanese make better carts.

Davey, First, as someone else pointed out, building an MC cartridge is not done by persons making 50 cents an hour. It is done only by an experienced craftsman. Among such persons in the world, only one that I know of lives in the US, and he is Peter Ledermann of Sound Smith. However, for his own good reasons, Peter has chosen to devote himself to Moving Iron (MI) and strain gauge cartridges, rather than to MC cartridges. For what it's worth, MI cartridges have many virtues that one may say make them superior (as a group) to MC cartridges, including lower moving mass. (But I don't want to open that can of worms.) So, if you must have a high end phono cartridge made in the USA, then bite the bullet and take a look at the Sound Smith product line. Grado also make superb "high end" MI cartridges, for that matter. There is no reason why high end MCs cannot be made in the USA, but the simple fact is that they are not, because no one has chosen to make them here.

For an added sense of exclusivity and bigger bucks, you might consider a Sound Smith strain gauge, as well.

Audio Note make cartridges in the UK