TIME'S CELEBRATION: ORTOFON FIRST CENTURY ANNIVERSARY ! ! ! ! !

Invictus, On VA, one of the inmates posted that with his SME V, the new Ortofon Century will give a resonant frequency of about 10Hz, smack in the middle of the desired range.  So maybe you ought to give it a thought for use with your SME V.  For me, with MC cartridges, it almost seems that my rating would be inversely proportional to voltage output, which is to say the lower the signal voltage output, the better the cartridge sounds in comparison to other models from the same maker or even across brands. And you don't necessarily need an all solid state phono stage to achieve low noise and high gain.

@lewm I will be trying the Concorde Century. But MC Century at $12K is beyond stupid. I can get an SME Model 20 for that price. Or a number of other awesome pieces of audio gear.

BTW, resonance would be at 11Hz. There are tons of other cartridges that would work just as well and better. And I'm not convinced that it's all that important.

I can think of no tube phono stages that will work well with a cartridge that has between 0.125 and 0.2 Mv of output. The age old argument has been that the less wire the less loss. IMHO, that is a bogus argument. What is lost by the necessity to have either an SUT or a “stressed” ss phono preamp, easily outweighs any gains in the minimization of the wiring. YMMV.

I enjoy the Ortofon cartridges a fair bit. Have an A90 on a Denon DP75 in VPI plinth and Acos GST 801 arm. There is a Cadenza Blue on a Technics SP10 MKII in obsidian plinth and EPA 250 arm. Have no problems with either cartridge into a Liberty Audio B2B-1 phono stage. Truth is the Cadenza Blue amazes me on a daily basis.

With that said i still adore my ZYX 4D.

Neo - you have a excellent Phono stage 😄🎶👍 - and no with the right amplifier any low output MC will shine.

Your B2B-1 is a boil down from this one
http://pbnaudio.com/audio-components/audio-preamps/olympia-pi-pxi

I fully agree the ZYX Cartridges are very special - excellent sound - even though the plastic body display a different perspective 

Good Listening 

Peter