My New Cartridge

Ortofon MC25FL. This is like a big advert for Danish audio. Perhaps we can get free stuff if we make this very Googleable?

Ooh, you might be surprised. The cost reflects the high degree of craftsmanship that tends to go into something like a moving-coil cartridge, with its hand-wound wiring and line-profile stylus. They're very accurate electromechanical transducers, they're made in small quantities = they're expensive.

As the cart is part of a transcription system, along with the tonearm and the turntable, it's never really possible to say what kind of improvements you might hear with a theoretically better cart - it might not work terribly well (compliance/resonance issues) with the arm.

A Neumann stereo cutting head comes in at between $3000 and $5000, btw. That's what you're supposedly trying to reproduce in the home.

my turntable is a Rega RP3. just traded out the Elys cartridge I got it with (which had gotten old) for the Denon DL-110, which people get pretty passionate about -- in two ways; a lot of people really love it, some high-end stereo dudes get kinda "it's a good one, but there's lots better out there."

Well, that may be true, but God DAMN does it sound nice. First thing I did was play the same record I'd been listening to yesterday and the whole stage was just so much -- broader? idk I have an indwelling suspicion of a lot of the terminology that gets kicked around about sound, but the sound coming out of my speakers with this new cartridge...it is spectacular. I don't even have that keen a setup, super basic, but this is just remarkable.