Your Favorite Cartridge Maker(s)? (pick three)

Denon, Audio Technica and Ortofon.

 

Yeah, on my second DL-110. Nice musical cart with big sound stage.

 

Denon for the money they generally perform and hang with carts costing much more. I've been running Denon carts since the early 80's. Now using a DL301 mk2 after the DL 160 production ended. 301 is a great cart!

 

Shure V15 ftw

 

For myself, nowadays...

Grado
Nagaoka
Koetsu (someday...)
.

 

...aaaand that's pretty much a wrap. With so many voters (about 200) and so many votes (about 500) logged already, the poll results probably aren't gonna change much ('poll inertia').

A big thank you to everyone who participated.


.

 

Ortofon, Empire, Shure.

 

Ortofon,

of course!

 

I think that Ortofon was always better known in Europe. Many older Dual cartridges are actually rebranded Ortofons.

 

The problem with the poll is that I don't have much experience with cartridges, but I still have to vote something to see the results.

I have used 3 cartridges since the 80's. My first turntable, a Sony, had a fixed arm with build-in "cartridge" and I could only replace the needle. Whitch I did frequently until the table died after some 15 years of use. I had moved to CDs by then and could care less anymore.

Fast forward some 30 years… Nowadays I've started using a 40 years old Dual 1225 with a DMS200 cartridge (and a new stylus). I think the DMS200 was build by Ortofon, but I'm not sure. Nowadays I also have a good phono stage in my Arcam amplifier. And I was amazed at how good a 40 year old player can sound. I was only tipping my toe in the water now, but wanted to experiment with cartridges and see if I could improve on that sound. Based on all kind of opinions here and elsewhere I bought the Shure M35X (a good value-for-money cart). Well, I didn't like it all, it actually sounded compressed. What other called "warm", I would call "boomy". Measuring the rips with the TT Meter, its needle drops where more compressed than those of the DMS200. And I thought they didn't sound better at all. And I started buying and playing records again because of the loudness wars in the digital domain. So owing a cart that made music sounding more compressed than a cartridge I already liked was not an option.

As this experiment kind of failed, I'm reluctant now to try any other cartridge in the same price range or move to the price ranges that most forum posters talk about. The problem is, where I live you can't try them out. I have to buy them and if I don't like them I'm losing a lot of money.

Anyway, if the DMS200 is actually an Ortofon, I don't hear the shrillness that is often reported on this forum about cheaper Ortofons. And it definitely sounds warmer than the YouTube clips of a 2m Red I listened too. Maybe I should just stay in the past and enjoy what I have.

 

Don't know the answer to your quandry (I've never heard a Shure M35X), but I'm sure someone must know something. Bump.

.

 

(In alphabetical order) I chose:

Audio Technica
Denon
Ortofon

 

The M35X is one of the carts I have. It's a very good cart that has some limitations. Compressed is not how I would describe it at all, but perhaps something in your equipment chain is giving it that sound (too much phono preamp gain?).

The problem with carts is that you never know how they will sound in YOUR system until you buy them and get them set up in YOUR system. Frustrating right? Believe me, I know the feeling.

Not sure if I posted it in this thread yet, but this site:

Welcome To DaveyW's Vinyl Corner

Is well worth checking out. Not just for the reviews, but for the soundclips you can download. Some of the models are discontinued but you can still get an idea of the house sound of certain brands by listening to these clips. Of course that is only a rough idea, since it won't tell you how things sound in YOUR system.

 

Ortofon's gonna hit 100 votes in the poll, and is basically blowing everyone away.

Their marketing team definitely deserves a raise.
.

 

Last three that I have owned were all awesome - Dynavector, Benz and currently Lyra.

I am thinking about going to a Rega rig and cartridge just to try something new but I have no objections whatsoever with my current Lyra.

 

Lyra
Dynavector
Koetsu

 

Audio Technica, Dynavector, Denon. Probably because those are the three that I have.

 

In my limited experience with different brands, I can tell for sure that I'm a big fan of Nagaoka cartridges just because of one clear reason: To me, they give the most natural, uncolored sound, which may not be of the liking of those who prefer a "discotheque" type of sound, with powerful lows, crisp highs and not so prominent middle frequencies.

 

That makes sense.