koetsu rosewood signature vs. Blue urushi

Yes, if you are buying it new. You will be pleased with it. But that is just for the Koetsu. There are a lot of other cartridges out there that are great and sell for less. For me, it is an adventure. I have lots of different cartridges. My current keepers are the Miyajima Shilabe, the Koetsu RSP, the Koetsu RS, the ZU-DL103R, the Denon 103R, The Shelter 901, the Accuphase AC-2, the Adcom Crosscoil SXC-VDH, The Dynavector Ruby Karat, and the Supex SD-900 MK-IV. I have heard lots of others. They all sound a bit different, but are all enjoyable. A lot has to do with the proper matching of the cartridge with the phono preamp, SUT, and tonearm combination. You can easily have a cartridge that on one setup sounds great and on another sounds not very good. That is why reviews are so hard. If you switch out just the cartridge, then you are comparing which cartridge sounds better in your system. That will be different for each system. The best reviews are when they compare a complete setup. There are a lot of biases on cartridges (or anything else) based on what they are matched with.

I agree Capnbob wholeheartedly.
Even when using different phono stage, the sound can vary from cart to cart, etc.
Wow, quite a bit of collection.
How do you compare the Shilabe & the Koetsu RSP ?
I ve heard few times the Shilabe & its quite a cart.

Hard to believe but I can't decide which I like better. There is no cartridge I have heard that compares with the midrange of the Koetsu. The Shilabe comes close but excels in the low and high frequency range. So, I have both currently mounted on different tonearms (both on JMW 12.7i arms) and I have been switching back and forth, depending on how I feel. Right now, the RSP is playing and there is no reason to switch it out. But I feel the same way when the Shilabe is playing.

Thanks for the advice. I have heard great things about the Air Tight. I just dont think it's in the budget

I'm going with the standard rosewood sig. I'll use the extra money for some nordost power cable. Capnbob. Are you in the sf bay area?