Hello friends,
which cheap cartridges, say for a price up to about 300 GBP, can easily compete with cartridges that cost considerably more?
Best cheap cart Iāve found is the ATvm95SH.
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Itās more about getting the right cartridge for your system. There will be a point when youāre happy with what a cartridge does and donāt want to spend more.
A more expensive cartridge will invariably offer more, but the law of diminishing returns comes into play.
I donāt think youāre going to get a Ā£300 cartridge that beats more expensive alternatives. If you could I suspect weād all own it.
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Denon Dl 103 R
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The Audio Technica AT-OC9MLII used to be an incredible value at around Ā£300, but has sadly been discontinued. These days thereās a whole range of AT-OC9 carts, but I havenāt heard any of them, however they must be worth a listen I reckon.
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Goldring E4.
The deck and arm affect the answer.
No good mounting a Denon 103 on an arm designed for a high compliance MM but on something that can deal with a bit more energy it can work very well indeed.
I recently tried a couple of cheaper cartridges to see what they could do in deeper waters and the 103 was one of them. On a Korf SF9R mounted on a PTP Lenco and feeding a supercapped superline it was very entertaining indeed. Swap it out for something ten times the price and you can hear what it misses but itās quite easy to forget whatās not there if youāre thoroughly enjoying what you have.
MMs give the arm an easier ride as a rule. The second cartridge I investigated was a Goldring 1042, slightly over your budget but the next one down in the series should fall within. Compared to the 103 it took effort to set up to take advantage of that stylus, once it was happy it was digging out finer detail but it lacked a bit for image depth. A good match for a Stageline N and it was hard to read when it was playing as it kept demanding my attention. More so than the Transfiguration Proteus that was on an Aro on my Artemis, that sounded more live but it needed more attention rather than demanded it.
Of the two Iād take the 103 if they were my last two cartridges but maybe not every time.
On something like a Project Debut an AT VN95EN was fun, that was into an onboard phonostage of an old Sansui integrated and expectations were considerably lower but it entertained non the less.
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For a very long time I used a simple AT95 on my Aro/LP12 to great effect. I just replaced the stylus every year. I think the cost was about Ā£12 at the time. It took some very expensive cartridges to sound significantly better.
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The AT95E is an amazing cartridge, although in many respects I think I slightly prefer the even cheaper AT3600L.
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Yes, thatās the conventional wisdom that I subscribed to untilā¦ I put a Denon DL103D on an SME3009/TD125 and guess what - it was sublime! I used this setup for several years until I finally gave in and got the full LP12 setup.
Iām now using an AT VM760SLC in an Ekos arm - also a poor combination by conventional wisdom but, again, its working perfectly (every bit as well as its predecessor - a Lyra).
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My first thought is not enough information, in particular what arm, then MM or MC.
Next, break the rules, as @sktn77a says conventional wisdom can sometimes be ignored. For years I had a Denon DL304 mounted on a Linn Ittok, people were adamant it would not work and I MUST have an AT OC9 or Dynavector 17D.
So as a slight move from AT95, try and do some research on the RigB mount and Paratrace stylus, the website is not a lot of help, try Facebook, or I think Cymbiosis carries some of the range.
Audio Technica AT OC9 XEB Ā£ 239
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For what deck and phonostage?
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DL-103D : 12 x 10ĀÆā¶ cm/dyne (100 Hz)
DL-103 : 5 x 10ĀÆā¶ cm/dyne (100 Hz)
They might share a body but theyāre not that similar.
I currently enjoy an SPU N on an Aro, unconventional wisdom (the Korf compliance calculator) says it should be light in the bass but it doesnāt seem to be. Iād still hesitate to put one on the arm of my first deck, a Micro Seiki DD24S or the Project Debut for that matter (which went to Oxfam so I canāt try it).
Buried in the Korf blog are some cartridge/arm vibration measurements, showing the difference in excitation of internal arm resonances from an MC and MM, blog 26 and 27 from Jan and Feb 2018.
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I have a Well Tempered Simplex and an Exposure XM3 Phonostage.
To me a Ā£300 cartridge is not cheap, but when I had a P2 I replaced the rega Carbon with a Goldring e3 and found it very good at about ā¬130, not unlike an MC in some respects. It needs a low mass arm though.
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Thanks for clarifying. Thatās really crucial. Because I can think of several very well regarded cartridges in the GBP300 region but as I am not at all familiar with the deck or the Exposure phonostage, i really couldnāt recommend anything.
As matching cartridge to phonostage is more critical than deck (both are important though), itās possible others can at least recommend a good match for the Exposure. The deck seems pretty rare round these parts.
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It looks a lot like a rega Carbonā¦
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Canāt comment on the combination with your arm or phonostage, but the 2M Bronze is near your budget and well regarded. Some even prefer it over the black.
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