OK. The ante has been upped and Piedpiper and John have made excellent points and others have chimed in so here goes:
The things that are important to me with phono cartridges are trackability, soundstage and evenness of response top to bottom. Detail retrieval is important but if the other three are not there, then it is unlikely this will also be present, at least in my experience. All cartridges thumbnailed below were used on a VPI Aries 2 with JMW 10.5 arm.
My first really high end cartridge beyond a $300 Grado and a $400 Van den Hul was a Benz Glider L2. Sonically I found this cartridge to be somewhat dry but quite detailed with a good three-dimensional soundstage but that did not extend much beyond the speaker boundaries. For instance, one of my cartridge test tracks is the end of Hendrix' Voodoo Child (Slight Return) where Eddie Kramer gets the pan pots moving and Jimi's guitar starts flying around the room, up around and behind the listening position. The ability of a cartridge to blow the "ceiling off the room" is one thing that better cartridges do while tracking this difficult inner groove and the Benz did this quite well. On acoustic music such as large orchestra or small jazz combos it tracked well, but sometimes got a bit hard on loud solo piano or in conjested areas of triple forte sections, usually at the end of the recordign where it is most difficult from a recording perspective. I ran this one at 1.8 grams.
Koetsu Urushi - moving up to this cartridge for the next few years from the Benz was a revelation in sweetness, liquidity and trackability with greater detail in the highs. The Koetsu works well on all styles of music and from lightly to heavily modulated recordings. It is highly sensitive to VTF and VTA settings and is quite revealing of the quality of the recording and the pressing; there are several pressings I have of several of my favorite albums, having picked many of these up cheaply at used stores and markets. It is very easy to discern which recording is which via the Koetsu. Where this cartridge really shines is on new pressings of 70s rock recordings and 50 and 60 classical and jazz pressing where the dynamic range wasn't crunched too heavily. Bass extension was about as good as with the Benz, clear with a lot of texture; one can hear the Moog Bass pedal definition well in recordings such as Genesis "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway." I ran this cart at 2.0 grams.
While traveling on business in Japan I found a new Shelter 501 mkII for a great price and installed this on the Aries to give the Koetsu a rest and figure out where to go in the future; have the Koetsu overhauled or go for another brand? I am also running a second Shelter on an Music Hall MM7/Project arm combo in a second system. Both Shelters are excellent at retrieving detail at 1.7 grams and are as good at tracking as the Benz; there are some highly modulated recordings such as Ray Brown's Soular Energy where some of the piano hits can slighty mistrack a bit at this VTF. Increasing this to 1.8 results in better trackability but I feel I lose some of the highs so 1.7 is the preferred VTF for both tables. The Shelter presents a deep and wide soundstage with detail retrieval that allows one to hear the separation of musicians in space with good three dimensionality. I can use this cartridge on all types of music and the mids are what I would point to as this catridge's strength. On both solid state and tube systems I enjoy a bit of laid back mids that don't present an ice-pick-in-the-ear quality even on low-fi punk with vocals screaming; this was sometimes a problem with the Benz. Also, the Shelter seems to be quite immune from playng at very loud volumes that, with the Koetsu, would get the woofers really moving at the resonance frequency. Probably this is due to a good compliance match between the cart and two arms I am running these with.
Finally and recently, I swapped out the Shelter for a Lyra Helikon on the VPI. This cartridge is one of a few components of any type that upon playing the first recording my wife exclaimed, WOW! The Lyra reveals more detail and air, solid clear bass and sweetness in the midrange than I have ever experienced before in any system. It tracks as if it was on rails and hugging all the groove undulations with its line contact stylus and mid-compliance susupension; even on the most heavily modulated recordings I have (Ray Brown), the piano never hardens but remains true to timbre, attack and presence; the envelope of each note is intact. Also more than the other carts mentioned above, I can hear much more ambience of the recording space, either added as processing or from the natural venue space. And ambience is really low signal level retrieval afterall. A great example of this is on Saint Saens' Organ Symphony 3 when the organ begins its appearance. The texture of the rich low pipes can clearly be heard with a naturalness that conveys the emotion the performance. You can tell the musicians really got into this performance. The Lyra only has about 20 hours on it so far but even if this was where it finally settled I would be very satisified with the results. Clearly the VPI/JMW is an excellent match for this fine cartridge. If there are better cartridges out there, I really don't to know about them right now simply because I am enjoying rediscovering my record collection with this fine component. Those bass pedals on The Lamb never punched through better even with CD. So clear and textured ae they, it's a bit scary in some ways. For now I am satisified with the Lyra. They are making some of the best out there. I run the Lyra at 1.70 grams.
Now if I can justify the cost of rebuilding the Koetsu, perhaps that cartridge can be restored to near Lyra performance levels.
Hope this helps
Oh yes, and with the Helikon, the ceiling completely flies away on Voodoo Child.
Steve
