Analog Upgrade - Where to start?

At the risk of totally being off track here, and not to diminish the high likelihood that a cartridge change will indeed give the OP what he is looking for, does anyone think the combo of Pass XA60.8 and Avant-Guard a strange one? I clearly don’t know AG speakers well enough to know if they like high current SS amps but I do know they are highly efficient and to me that usually suggests tubes as a better (but potentially noisier) choice.  Are there impedance curves a better match with SS?

One problem I have had selecting cartridges in the past is that nobody seems willing to let you do a home trial … I can understand why. Each system and room is so idiosyncratic that I don’t see how you can select a cartridge without trying it in your system, especially those +$5,000 cartridges.  That is a lot of money to spend when you can’t know how it will sound in your system/room.  How do you overcome this?

I think you have to go with some generalizations to point yourself in your preferred direction.  As @mulveling describes earlier there are the vDH, A90, Lyra type carts and then there are the Koetsu type.  I would put SoundSmith somewhere in between that continuum.  If to have the right arm and phono stage you should be able to try those different types and see what you like.  Start used lower in the line and go from there?

Dear @karl_desch  : The OP speakers  works at around 10 ohms impedance except for two peaks, one at the midrange resonance frequency ( 53hz. ) and one at 19khz resonance tweeter.

The 60.8 is really fine with those speakers and is very good design. Along the speakers exist two OP system subwoofers.

Main " problem "  seems to me is not down there for what the OP is looking for.

R.

Dear @chilli42 : Do you already tested your 1s in both tonearms? in which performs the better? which impedance value are you trying? do you already tested the 1s with a different impedance values?

which protractor did you use for the cartridge/tonearm set up and which alignment are using with?

Thank's in advance.

R.