Phono Cartridges - Your favorites and least favorites?

Mather said:
Holy moly this cart man. I'm at 11 hours of break in of what's supposed to be about 30 and it's pretty wild.
Best description, whereas before the sound would kind of come at you in a horizontal wave that would kinda reach the back of the room behind your head and a bit above it. Now it's like a giant dome that starts about 20 feet behind the stereo in the neighbors yard, and goes about 20 feet high over the entire house and stretches about 30 feet behind you
Like instead of the music being in front of you running past you, now you're inside it. It's pretty unreal.

*Disclaimer... May have been not entirely sober at the time.
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Channel separation baybeeee
 
Mather said:
Holy moly this cart man. I'm at 11 hours of break in of what's supposed to be about 30 and it's pretty wild.
Best description, whereas before the sound would kind of come at you in a horizontal wave that would kinda reach the back of the room behind your head and a bit above it. Now it's like a giant dome that starts about 20 feet behind the stereo in the neighbors yard, and goes about 20 feet high over the entire house and stretches about 30 feet behind you
Like instead of the music being in front of you running past you, now you're inside it. It's pretty unreal.

*Disclaimer... May have been not entirely sober at the time.
Click to expand...
Why Mather, yes, I think a Paua Tour is a great idea. Put me on the list! So generous!
 
Mather said:
Holy moly this cart man. I'm at 11 hours of break in of what's supposed to be about 30 and it's pretty wild.
Best description, whereas before the sound would kind of come at you in a horizontal wave that would kinda reach the back of the room behind your head and a bit above it. Now it's like a giant dome that starts about 20 feet behind the stereo in the neighbors yard, and goes about 20 feet high over the entire house and stretches about 30 feet behind you
Like instead of the music being in front of you running past you, now you're inside it. It's pretty unreal.

*Disclaimer... May have been not entirely sober at the time.
Click to expand...
fuck yeah dude. Sounds like you’re having some fun!

My wife told me recently the moment where she felt the sound on my system increased the most drastically and noticeably was when I swapped to Grado Opus for a Hana SL. She said that’s the only moment when she’s been actually impressed by an upgrade hahah.

The Ultradeck was underwhelming to her.
The Lintons were underwhelming to her.
The NAD was underwhelming to her.
The Sutherland was underwhelming to her.

But the cartridge change made her actually go whoa. I tried to explain to her that it was the cherry on top of the stack and not the whole thing but she didn’t care for that much.
 
Ghost said:
fuck yeah dude. Sounds like you’re having some fun!

My wife told me recently the moment where she felt the sound on my system increased the most drastically and noticeably was when I swapped to Grado Opus for a Hana SL. She said that’s the only moment when she’s been actually impressed by an upgrade hahah.

The Ultradeck was underwhelming to her.
The Lintons were underwhelming to her.
The NAD was underwhelming to her.
The Sutherland was underwhelming to her.

But the cartridge change made her actually go whoa. I tried to explain to her that it was the cherry on top of the stack and not the whole thing but she didn’t care for that much.
Click to expand...

It’s a pretty damn special carriage for the price in fairness. I was never anything but impressed by it!
 
Ghost said:
fuck yeah dude. Sounds like you’re having some fun!

My wife told me recently the moment where she felt the sound on my system increased the most drastically and noticeably was when I swapped to Grado Opus for a Hana SL. She said that’s the only moment when she’s been actually impressed by an upgrade hahah.

The Ultradeck was underwhelming to her.
The Lintons were underwhelming to her.
The NAD was underwhelming to her.
The Sutherland was underwhelming to her.

But the cartridge change made her actually go whoa. I tried to explain to her that it was the cherry on top of the stack and not the whole thing but she didn’t care for that much.
Click to expand...
You are lucky, the only thing I did to the system so far that made an improvement to my wife (that was worthy of comment - I'll explain in a minute) was when I isolated the ELACS.


From lp60 to u-turn and pluto - nothing
from the crap KLH to ELAC - nothing
fucking shitty ort to grado (and every upgrade since) - nothing
from sony to NAD - nothing (said anyhow - I can play the music a lot louder without her complaining about it now - I've not pointed this out to her, because then she will be like well stop playing it so loud)

But putting the speakers in a worse position while offsetting what I lost with great isolation, that was the thing she noticed. (To be fair, they do sound way better where they are now than before, ideal placement be damned)
 
Mather said:
I had the Silver that came with my table which was the Red with silver coils and I couldn't get it off my table soon enough, it was so painfully sharp. The Bronze had absolutely none of that on my rig, it was a completely pleasant listen, but too pleasant at times. So yeah very different experiences.
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One factor we may not always account for is capacitance. High capacitance in the phono and cables will tend to boost high frequencies on a MM cart and can make bright cartridges even more so.

The Bronze calls for a recommended load capacitance of 150-300 pF. I’ve seen some notable 1m cables hit 500 pF for just the cable alone. I’d imagine a 500 pF cable with a line contact MM cartridge could possibly create a “howler monkey” if you have HF hearing sensitivity.
 
Angsty said:
One factor we may not always account for is capacitance. High capacitance in the phono and cables will tend to boost high frequencies on a MM cart and can make bright cartridges even more so.

The Bronze calls for a recommended load capacitance of 150-300 pF. I’ve seen some notable 1m cables hit 500 pF for just the cable alone. I’d imagine a 500 pF cable with a line contact MM cartridge could possibly create a “howler monkey” if you have HF hearing sensitivity.
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Yeah that makes perfect sense. I know when I was testing out speaker cables one of them was something very silver forward and it was a screechy disaster.
 
Ghost said:
fuck yeah dude. Sounds like you’re having some fun!

My wife told me recently the moment where she felt the sound on my system increased the most drastically and noticeably was when I swapped to Grado Opus for a Hana SL. She said that’s the only moment when she’s been actually impressed by an upgrade hahah.

The Ultradeck was underwhelming to her.
The Lintons were underwhelming to her.
The NAD was underwhelming to her.
The Sutherland was underwhelming to her.

But the cartridge change made her actually go whoa. I tried to explain to her that it was the cherry on top of the stack and not the whole thing but she didn’t care for that much.
Click to expand...
I’m simply impressed that your wife cares two sh*ts about how your system sounds!

Here, my wife is consistently less than impressed with my audio fiddlings.
 
kvetcha said:
Very cool info!

I will say, though, that many (perhaps all?) of the lowest moving mass MM on the list are no longer in production (a lot of Shures and Technics). Most of the low-moving mass cartridges you can still buy are MI and MC.

The technology was clearly there, but it may have coincided with the decline of vinyl playback in general, much like linear tracking tables.
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Here’s where things can get confusing; the 2M Red, the 2M Blue and the Soundsmith Otello all have the same effective tip mass. I’d bet that the Hana EL has the same 0.5mg tip mass, but they don’t publish that spec.

Unlike the distinctive differences mainstream cartridge manufacturers had in the heyday of vinyl, it seems now that most of the stylus/cantilever assemblies come from the same few suppliers. The stylus and cantilever are the largest contributors to effective tip mass.

This is the geeky stuff that is less important than how we enjoy the music produced, but I do find it fascinating.
 
Woof. Wish me luck, going to attempt to realign my Hana SL tmm, I've never successfully aligned a cart before. Getting a lot of IGD as of late that wasn't so noticeable before my amp upgrade but now is pretty glaring. Tried adjusting VTA and antiskate to limited success. I'm going to be using the Hudson Hi-Fi alignment kit as I really really didn't enjoy the MoFi geodisc thing, the whole "point this at the center of your arm" felt far too fussy and inaccurate.

Any pointers for a first timer?

Going to be properly checking VTA + tracking force before I start fiddling with the mount but I'm feeling this is likely a misalignment thing!
 
Ghost said:
Woof. Wish me luck, going to attempt to realign my Hana SL tmm, I've never successfully aligned a cart before. Getting a lot of IGD as of late that wasn't so noticeable before my amp upgrade but now is pretty glaring. Tried adjusting VTA and antiskate to limited success. I'm going to be using the Hudson Hi-Fi alignment kit as I really really didn't enjoy the MoFi geodisc thing, the whole "point this at the center of your arm" felt far too fussy and inaccurate.

Any pointers for a first timer?

Going to be properly checking VTA + tracking force before I start fiddling with the mount but I'm feeling this is likely a misalignment thing!
Click to expand...
be sure to check VTF when you are done fooling around with everything.
 
Ghost said:
Woof. Wish me luck, going to attempt to realign my Hana SL tmm, I've never successfully aligned a cart before. Getting a lot of IGD as of late that wasn't so noticeable before my amp upgrade but now is pretty glaring. Tried adjusting VTA and antiskate to limited success. I'm going to be using the Hudson Hi-Fi alignment kit as I really really didn't enjoy the MoFi geodisc thing, the whole "point this at the center of your arm" felt far too fussy and inaccurate.

Any pointers for a first timer?

Going to be properly checking VTA + tracking force before I start fiddling with the mount but I'm feeling this is likely a misalignment thing!
Click to expand...
When using an alignment gauge, be prepared to spend some time. It will be an iterative process to check between the two null points to make sure everything aligns at both points. Depending on the table and cart, it could take 30 minutes or more.

The Geodisc simplifies by having only one null point, but requires a line of sight to the pivot point instead. I use a metal yardstick to align the line of sight instead of just eyeballing it as MoFi describes.
 
Angsty said:
When using an alignment gauge, be prepared to spend some time. It will be an iterative process to check between the two null points to make sure everything aligns at both points. Depending on the table and cart, it could take 30 minutes or more.

The Geodisc simplifies by having only one null point, but requires a line of sight to the pivot point instead. I use a metal yardstick to align the line of sight instead of just eyeballing it as MoFi describes.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I’m going to use both to verify the current alignment status. My issue with the Geodisc is that seeing the pivot point on the MoFi is a bit of a faf, and I never actually know if I’m dead center or not. For example:

What to my eyes currently shows as dead center says my cart is perfectly aligned, but I push it a smidge to a place that also feels pretty dead center then my cart overshoots the the landing zone by a bit. My brain is telling me the dual landing zone protractor will be a bit more reliable in helping me understand if it’s out of alignment to begin with.

Also will be checking azimuth + VTA properly before I start loosening any screws on the cart! Will keep y’all updated as I get into it tmm.
 
Angsty said:
When using an alignment gauge, be prepared to spend some time. It will be an iterative process to check between the two null points to make sure everything aligns at both points. Depending on the table and cart, it could take 30 minutes or more.

The Geodisc simplifies by having only one null point, but requires a line of sight to the pivot point instead. I use a metal yardstick to align the line of sight instead of just eyeballing it as MoFi describes.
Click to expand...
I will say that the Geodisc works extremely well with the Sol and it's easily eyeballed unipivot.
 
I’m fucking hilarious.

My alignment was dead on for both parts on the Baerwald protractor *thank god*

Buttttt

• My VTA was off, I was running tail down by a good bit.
• My tracking force was off by a couple grams
• And my left speaker was where my right speaker should’ve been and vise versa and I had the right grill on the left speaker and the left grill on the right speaker

So now sitting down and spinning a record and it would appear my records do indeed sound much better.

Just your yearly reminder to read your instruction manuals for speaker set up after a cross country move and stop eyeballing things like VTA 😂
 
Ghost said:
I’m fucking hilarious.

My alignment was dead on for both parts on the Baerwald protractor *thank god*

Buttttt

• My VTA was off, I was running tail down by a good bit.
• My tracking force was off by a couple grams
• And my left speaker was where my right speaker should’ve been and vise versa and I had the right grill on the left speaker and the left grill on the right speaker

So now sitting down and spinning a record and it would appear my records do indeed sound much better.

Just your yearly reminder to read your instruction manuals for speaker set up after a cross country move and stop eyeballing things like VTA 😂
Click to expand...

Sometimes it really does pay off to just sit back, relax and enjoy the tunes! Preferably with your favourite tipple!
 
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