Goodbye ZYX Airy 3

there you go, but it's weak now, so imports are more expensive. platinum version is just another marketing tweak to make you pay more.

Cartridges do not get better. They just get different. Might be nothing more that the color of the housing, or a different rubber compound for the suspension, but a change is perceived as an improvement so sales will continue. It's all about the money!

It's not only with ZYX. It's with all cartridges and other products. Audiotechica OC9 used to be $50...60, now it's $420; went-up almost 10x.
All bcoz paper bucks, missing gold in FR vault (rapidly spent on MidEsast crusades).

I believe that if you run a search, you will see that Dougdeacon has posted his impressions of the Universe II, about which he thought highly enough to trade in his Uni. As far as pricing goes, IF the yen tracks the Euro, then the price increase cannot be attributed to currency fluctuations.

I have upgraded my grey market ZYX Airy silver coil (from Juki) to official Premium ZYX 4D SB2 copper once. Those models are different. I have been used Airy-3 on EPA-100 with stock headshell of EPA tonearm with silver Van Ned Hul silver headshell leads and silver VDH internal tonearm cable. Later i bought official Premium ZYX 4D X SB2 and when i mounter it on ZYX Live 18 shell the improvement was so big that my girlfriend noticed that. The 4D is much better cartridge than Airy, well at leat for my music (jazz, funk, soul, latin from the 60s and 70s). I have noticed that i like copper version over the silver one (both low output versions used with ZYX CPP-1 pre-pre and WLM Minueta Referense Phono Stage).

Anyway i would like to read the review about 4D vs. Premium 4D.