Would you put a $7,000 cartridge on a $4,500 turntable?

It is often said, and appreciated, that cartridge choice is as important as your speaker choice - both having the most significant impact on the overall sound in a given system.

That said, from my experience, cartridges influence the sound of vinyl playback systems more than turntables. Forget what you paid for your turntable and stop comparing that cost to the cartridge. It is an irrelevant comparison. The real question is… is your turntable worthy, regardless of the price? If it is, then don’t hold back on spending as much as you can possibly afford on a cartridge. It will be money well spent.

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Thanks guys, I appreciate the diverse points of view. I’m going to mull over next steps.

It’d be great if cartridges could be demo’d like PS Audio gear!

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Do you have a headphone rig? You could build a real nice one for the price of that cartridge…

@vee

Vee; If you haven’t read this, Jeff Dorgay’s review of the G1200 in Tone Audio says that the G1200 uses the same tonearm as your table and makes a number of interesting points about maximizing performance of the tonearm. He also mentions that he installed a $6k Transfiguration Proteus on the arm with great results. ( I love my Transfiguration Axia S !)

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My best investment was a Loricraft PRC4 wet cleaning machine. Records have not static or dust, no nasty pops and cartridge tip life (in my recent experience having had my cartridges checked) extended by about 3 or 4 times.

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The thing that makes mega-buck cartridges so hard to justify for me is not so much their price tag, but the fact that they’re essentially disposable (yes, I know, re-tips, but the number of recently re-tipped cartridges on the used market tells me people don’t trust/want them). A $10,000 cartridge might be in its prime for 1,000 hours - so $10 every per record played! Ouch!

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I think it just as likely that people wear out a cartridge, send it in for a re-tip, and then while waiting for the cartridge to return audiophile nervosa hits and they start thinking “what if I upgraded to the next level?” I know that’s been my modus operandi for years! :smile::smile:

I’d also mention that the uncertainty about re-tip outcomes is one reason I’m a fan of Ortofon cartridges. You can send it back to the factory and they rebuild it instead of re-tipping. There’s an explanation of the difference on their website.

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I think cartridges are so over-priced nowadays. If something happens to my Lyra
now, I don’t think I can afford a new one at same performance level. I got mine a
long time ago when prices was reasonable. Just cannot imagine the profit margin
compare to other HiFi products. One can easily store a million dollar’s worth of
them in 2 plastic bin from Home Depot, or the cost of packaging & shipping. Imagine comparing
that to speakers. Unfortunately, the perception of it has to be above certain price
point to even get a glance among the audio-snobs. Sadly, we are all contributors of this
culture.

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It didn’t take long, but here’s where I’m at.

I found a terrific dealer, Wes at Common Wave, who walked me through all the pros and cons – extremely knowledgeable – and owns the same Technics turntable. He had the same point of view as all the dealers I spoke with – a $7,000 cartridge is too much for the 1200GAE – but had the patience to walk me through his thinking. In short, the tonearm doesn’t have all the adjustments and stability needed to make the most of the cartridge – it could be done with enough effort, but a proper 4-point tonearm would be best. He also thought the direct drive mechanism is best in class, but that the stability of the platform could be better for the cartridge; Dr. Feickert and Kuzma tables/tonearms were in his top three, along with the Technics SL-1000R, all $10K plus TTs.

He also thinks the PS Audio Stellar Phono Pre is a terrific piece.

So my plan is this.

I put in an order for a Soundsmith Hyperion on sale for $5,995, retails for $7,995. It comes with a 10-year warranty on the stylus, so free re-tips so long as the cartridge was setup properly. That means I’ll likely get two, maybe three, re-tips over 10 years – depending on the manufacturer you’re looking at, that’s up to $6,000 in savings – the Hyperion is a $850 re-tip if I ever damaged it. In short, worry free ownership.

Wes will install it on the Technics with new mat and headshell so I can enjoy it while I mull over options for the next TT upgrade – or I might have sated my curiosity for the next 10 years.

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That’s one reason why I bought the SoundSmith, they do the same, for $300 on my unit. It’s designed for a quick rebuild.
https://www.sound-smith.com/services/cartridge-rebuilding-retipping#t1

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That is very good that your dealer has direct experience with your turntable and arm. That will pay dividends on costly mistakes. Let us know how it works out with part 1 of your upgrade.

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Back in my Vinyl Days, I had a Grado Red Cartridge on a Dual CS515 Turntable. If I still had that TT today, I wouldn’t hesitate to put a $1k Cartridge on it. But I digress, I don’t do Vinyl anymore.

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@vee I had the Hyperion on order and “chickened out” thinking the Rega Aphelion2 would be a better match for my Rega RP10 TT. Plus I got $500 trade in allowance on my Apheta2. Anyway, I’d be very interested in your impressions with that cactus needle cantilever cart. Wild stuff and Peter Ledermann is a legend in the cartridge world.
Best of luck,
Kurt

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@kcleveland123 sounds good. I’ll come back with impressions.

The price of the turntable isn’t the same as the capability of the turntable. If you have a VPI CLASSIC 2 series or the equivalent, yes, that will handle a really good cartridge.

image

I use a CLASSIC 2 with a Benz Ruby Z but have since switched to my SUMIKO BLACKBIRD, a far cheaper cartridge, that is a more bouncy sound using a different set of speakers than I used with the Benz Ruby Z. So that’s the situation, If you like the combination it’s fine. But, the PRICE of a given combination isn’t the be all to end all. This, of course, is audio in a nutshell…it depends on if you like it! Odds are better to like it if the arm/table get the most from the cartridge, though.

Look at the cartridge arm resonance values and see if it is proper for your cartridge. Match the cartridge to what you have. Some cartridges come in two flavors for this exact reason. You can’t use a MC too well with an SME 3009 series II arm, for instance. The price is immaterial as the arm DESIGN is intended to go one way or the other. You have to buy in the direction the cartridge needs. More money in the wrong direction won’t fix that. But, there are people who tape a NICKEL to the top of the SME arm to change the resonance on the cheap (5 cents).

Best,
Galen Gareis

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Even if I could afford a $7500 cartridge I would never spend that kind of money on a phono cartridge.

Given a decent turntable, I’d put the highest priority to get the best and most sophisticated and adjustable on the tonearm. Better a 7k tonearm and a 1k cartridge than the opposite. Much better.

Striking a good balance is critical. From my own experience, in the early 90s, I bought a Van den Hul MC for my Technics SL1200 MK2. The result was not even close to what I was hoping for. The tonearm, the internal wiring, and the phono cable were not ready for the VDH. I put a $3k cartridge on a turntable that was worth less than $1k at the time.

By comparison, my friend had an Oracle Delphi with an SME tonearm with a $250 MM Goldring that sounded amazing. It was not even MC, but his TT, tonearm and cabling helped the cartridge resolve music at its best. He had a small box phono stage from Project, and I had a fully fledged tube phono preamp from Musical Fidelity, yet he had it better.

Eventually, I replaced the tonearm on my technics with a basic Origin Live Onyx, and the result was remarkable. The technics sounded like a new machine. Long term, I moved to Rega P8 & Apheta 2 to stop worrying about VTA, Azimuth, overhang, etc. etc. Through the Stellar Phono, the P8 / Apheta combination sounds better than many 192/24 recordings. If I could afford it, I would do the same as Kurt @kcleveland123 and buy me a Planar 10 with Aphelion 3, full stop.

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Here is the view of a leading turntable designer (who also designs cartridges, phono amps, cables and speakers).

Apportion budget: Vinyl-based replay

Turntable 23%
Tonearm 18% (the importance of the arm is explained in tonearm overview)
Cartridge 5%
Phono Stage 25% (the phono stage accounts for up to 95% of the total amplification in Vinyl based systems)
Amplifiers 15%
Speakers 15%

The only way to sensibly quantify contribution is to do comparison tests. Magazines used to highlight the importance of front-end hierarchy by setting up two identical Linn turntables – one with a £400 Ittok tonearm and £20 AT95E cartridge. The other with a £150 Basik tonearm and £500 cartridge. Which sounded better? It may be a surprise, but the £20 cartridge in the better arm outperformed the expensive £500 cartridge in the lesser arm.

See https://www.originlive.com/key-information/how-to-choose-hi-fi-system/

That means quite some expense if we assume that we’d prefer a speaker at least in the 10k range :wink: