Goldring 1042 or Rega Exact

Bombaywalla - thanks for the response. I have a Rega RB300 tonearm on my Planar 3. My Planar 3 is stock and about four years old.

Mmowry,

I'm pretty certain that the G1042 is a very good match for the RB300. Maybe others who also have experience w/ this cart. reading this thread can also chime in.
Another suggestion for research is to go over to AudioAsylum.com & search the vinyl asylum archives for G1042. Plenty of good stuff written on this cart. as it is very popular. Read the good & the bad on this as nothing is perfect. This MM does more rights than wrongs by a long shot in my books.
FWIW. IMHO.

Your weak link is the turntable. Don't waste your money on a new cartridge. The glass and particle board TT's are touted as *audiophile* decks but when matched to a good digital rig they don't stand a chance. Main reason is their unacceptable speed/rotational stability, with vibration being a close second. Hear it in the attack and decay of percussion instruments. In your digital rig the attack will be fast, tight, well located in space and the decay wil be linear. In your Rega the attack will sound slow, blurry and the decay will waver. Get a CD & LP copy of something like Santana and listen to what I'm telling you...

Psychicanimal,you are correct when you say the weak link is the turntable,but there are ways around this.Firstly check the speed with a downloadable strobe from Extreme Phono's site.Planar 3's are usually 1-2% fast.To correct this, 2 equal spliced... length's of electrical tape wound around the rim of the sub-platter to widen it, cures this.Mine works fine.Experiment with the number of layers,testing with the strobe,and trim it.As regards a cartridge,both those MM's do not have a high enough frequency response.The Sumiko Blue Point Special or Denon 103 is ideal in this price range,if you can get a step-up or phono stage for MC.The Ortofon X5-MC is High Output MC and can be used in the existing stage.The platter can be easily replaced with an acrylic one,either bought off the web or you can have it machined cheaper.This table can go up against a $10,000 digital front-end when set-up right.stefanl

Stefan, such a light platter relying on AC speed regulation cannot counter static and dynamic stylus drag forces. Music will not sound right. Sorry...