MONO cartridge recommendation

The big question for me is whether the minority of available mono cartridges that are built for mono from the ground up (which means they have little or no vertical compliance and no capacity to respond in stereo to the groove modulations) are intrinsically superior in reproduction to the rest.

My cartridge is vertically compliant but does not transmit any signal in the vertical plane. When the needle drops to the record surface, it makes no sound, whereas my AT150Sa makes a very loud THUMP!

When I play a munged up mono record with any stereo cartridge, the surface noise is unbearable. When I play the same record with the AT-MONO3/LP, all I hear is the music.

As I said before, I got my AT-MONO3/LP cart for a paltry $112. and change. KABUSA's mono switch is $229. My tonearm uses interchangeable headshells, so switching to the mono cart takes very little time including balancing and resetting the VTF.

If, however, I had a tonearm with integrated headshell and had to swap carts on one of those every time I had a hankering for mono, you can bet I'd buy the KABUSA mono switch instead.

I still stand by that modern mono carts with vertical compliance are a good thing as long as the cart doesn't transmit signal in the vertical plane.

bdp24, I really don't know what you are trying to say.  Using a mono cartridge that was built from a stereo cartridge by internally bridging the two channels is precisely the same thing electrically as using the mono switch on a preamplifier.  Bridging, either inside the cartridge body or at the mono switch, has the effect of cancelling the surface noise from a mono LP, just as you say, by cancelling the signal derived from vertical movement of the stylus tip.  One could argue that deriving the mono signal at the linestage level is possibly less effective than doing it inside the cartridge, because the stereo signal has to pass through RIAA correction and amplification before the noise can be cancelled.  Maybe, just maybe, doing it at the cartridge body is audibly more effective.  Which is one reason (besides the fact that in one of my two systems I have not even a mono switch) that I too am curious to acquire a mono cartridge.

I would wager that 90% or more of "mono" cartridges in the current marketplace are derived by internal bridging. Have fun trying to figure out which cartridges (other than Miyajima, EMT, and perhaps one of the Ortofons) are "true" mono cartridges, if you want to find out whether that is a better way to go; most manufacturers use a lot of double-talk in describing their mono cartridges such that it is usually impossible to be sure. I know this because I spent a great deal of time at their various websites researching mono cartridges and came away disappointed by the total lack of clarity, again with the exception of Miyajima.

I can't answer Lewm's question but I do know my Miyajima Premium BE Mono cartridge sounds great with all my mono LPs.  Unfortunately I don't use it very often because I have to switch tonearms to do so, and I am basically lazy. 

I will take slight exception to some comments made earlier in this thread to the effect that playing mono records with a stereo cartridge results in a lot of noise unless you use a mono switch to parallel the outputs.  I listen to many, many mono LPs with my Benz LP stereo cartridge without a mono switch, and most of these are just as quiet as my old stereo LPs.  A mono cartridge (or a mono switch) will make the noisy LPs quieter, that's true, but I wouldn't want anyone to avoid playing mono records just because they don't have a mono cartridge or a mono switch on their preamp.  

@salectric not sure if it was my comments you were referring to but to clarify. I've no reason to believe (nor have I ever experienced) a reduction in record related noise (i.e. from the playing surface) in using a mono cartridge over a stereo, with or without a mono switch.

However going to a true Mono cartridge may (and often will) induce objectionable hum in your setup. This is intrinsic to the challenges of adding a mono source in a system not designed for it (see the reference below for a discussion of the issue and some solutions)
http://www.durand-tonearms.com/Support/Mono%20connections/monoconnections.html

In my experience having a mono switch or having the ability to lift, or part bypass via a resistor, the ground at the cartridge input to your phono stage or step up is essential to rid your system of this hum