Cartridges are serious tone controls.
Their different style stylus affect drag and friction and where they ride in the groove, such as ones that pull all the dirt out or just happily skip along the surface, etc.
They are like speakers, the more different they sound the more tone control like.
I have an old Telarc demo/test disc, and there is some serious low energy in the beach boys good vibrations cut. Some of the higher priced cartridges fall apart on that cut compared to a budget dynavector.
My point is, unless your cartridge have specs that matter, and better specs mean more accuracy to the recording, then paying more for a cartridge without better specs (if you can find any) just means paying for a tone control.
No problems with that, but price does not always reflect true accuracy or value, but just a changed sound. And that can be compensating for all kinds of other things in the system that are each purchased on the basis of some sound, and hence the never ending merry go round of component change outs...all the while feeling great satisfaction that it must be better because it costs more....
There is accuracy to the recording and there is what "sounds" good, and sometimes they both converge.
Funny, people are always dogging the japanese "spec war" amps, and yet quite a few in the club have pulled out their old pioneers and kenwoods and what not and had them re-capped and can't find anything wrong with the "sound". Perhaps aged ears....or perhaps there is not anything wrong with them used within their capabilities. Would those amps be classified as mid-century modern now?
Tom
