Cartridge recommendation for classical listening

There are cartridges on the market with 9.5 mV output like Shure M44-7, unfortunately they are not the best MM in terms of sound quality, not better than MM with 1.5mV output.

High efficient speakers is the key to keep the volume control knob down even with passive preamps and low voltabe power amps.

I’m running 1.5 watt single ended triod tube amp with passive preamp, some of my cartridges are 0.2 mV and the volume control on my passive Pass Aleph L preamp is no more than 10-30%. Why? Because the speakers are 101db (and my room is not small).

It is system dependent. According to Nelson Pass we often have too much gain in our devises. 

such as, the beauty diminishing as I turned the volume up.

@rvpiano,  If the volume has something to do with it, that's not the cartridge.

Since the high end of the cartridge tends to be a little bright (which you might not agree with,) records that have a bright high end of their own are exacerbated by volume increase. I’m not saying it’s there on well produced records.  It’s not. But on not so well produced records, which I have a lot of, it’s painful.
Until the Clear Audio arrives, I’m listening to good sounding records, and the Sumiko is really excellent!

Goldring 1042

Since the high end of the cartridge tends to be a little bright (which you might not agree with,) records that have a bright high end of their own are exacerbated by volume increase.

@rvpiano  As I mentioned earlier, if you have a high output cartridge, loading of the cartridge is paramount for correct performance! If not loaded correctly it is common for the unloaded cartridge to be bright. This is due to an electrical resonance that is occurring due to the inductance of the cartridge and the capacitance of the tone arm interconnect cable (plus the input capacitance of the phono section).


For this reason, its a good idea to use a low capacitance interconnect cable- to push the resonance up and outside of the audio band!!

IOW the brightness you hear may not be an actual characteristic of the cartridge- and is just a setup issue; one which happens with many cartridges. Since this is a really inexpensive thing to deal with, its worth it to look into this before moving on.