It’s the Stageline, I’m afraid. Is it possible to borrow another phono stage from your dealer?
Reading about the TP16 over on VinylEngine, it’s a tricky arm to set up correctly but a good arm once done, so play with that first. You might be surprised at the results. Start at the beginning with a properly maintained and setup turntable if you haven’t already.
Nagaoka make some lovely cartridges but the whole system has to gel as well thus the Pro-Ject might be a better match. Do you have other cartridges available to experiment with? There’s some great classic cartridges available fairly cheaply and if they work for you, a new JICO stylus would really be a worthwhile investment, they often quite a step up from OEM (like my Shure V15 MKIII with a JICO SAS stylus).
Similarly for the phono stage, if you can beg, borrow or steal something different, some experimentation would be worthwhile. I run a Dynavector P75 now, have used Rega and Cambridge Audio, and with a little luck you can pick up something used quite cheaply and resell without loss.
For what it is worth, I enjoy my 2M Blue on my Thorens TD350 (yes it deserves a better cartridge) into my Stageline N.
Did a little testing with shure, audio technica, ortofon and my nagaoka today. The ortofon (2m red for now) is the right choice - it just adds all the missing parts for me: body in the lower mids, some really deep bass, and super open treble. Nothing over sharp or tinny. I guess you
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