Ikeda 9GSS cartridge compliance

Scot, you are on the right track, the 4 Point 9 is an amazing arm. Like Mike Fremer I set the SRA to 92 degrees and forget about it. VTA towers are not worth the expense. I would go with the 9. The 4 Point 9 is in my list of top 5 tonearms. 
What are you using for a table? 

You have that reversed Scot. If a cartridge has a compliance of 5 um/mN at 100 Hz it will be around 9 um/mN at 10 Hz. Not quite doubled. A cartridge with a compliance of 17-18 um/mN at 10 Hz will work in just about any medium mass tonearm. You might have to add a little weight. 

A word on cartridge performance. It has been shown that shorter lighter arms outperform longer heavier ones. The big arms have a much higher polar moment of inertia which means it takes more force to get them moving. There are always irregularities in the surface of a record. You do not hear them because they are at a very low frequency. But just like flapping woofers they cause distortion at higher frequencies that you do hear. Lighter arms follow these irregularities better filtering out the irregularities even with more compliant cartridges. The heavy arms don't move so the cantilever winds up following the irregularities creating the distortion previously mentioned. 
It has been hypothesized (not proven) that this is the reason some straight line trackers sound better because they are short and light.

I forgot to mention, there is nothing wrong with step up transformers. If you have a phono stage that you like the best thing to do is install naked but shielded transformers inside the phono stage. You can add a switch to switch them in or out of the circuit. Personally I do not like switches an other controls in the cartridges signal path. I only ever keep one cartridge installed, the one I like best. So, I will go in and move two wires. Might take me 10 minutes total. I have an ARC PH3 SE which I adore. But, it only has 54 dB of gain which is not enough for many cartridges. I installed two Sowter mono phono transformers and they sound great. Doing it this way results in a quieter situation and it avoids another interconnect and two connections in the signal path. Rt now I have a high output Soundsmith cartridge so the transformers are disconnected. I would very much like to try an ultra low impedance cartridge with a current mode phono stage but I just spent all my Hi Fi money for the year.
Maybe next year:-)

@lewm , you know me well enough to know I would never do that. You have to use more compliant cartridges. Running with a high resonance frequency begs for feedback and bass tracking problems. But, I will always go for the lighter arm as long as it is very stiff and has only 2 degrees of freedom. The Schroder CB, Reed 2G and Tri-Planar are examples of arms I would buy, all 9 inch versions. If you have to add a little mass to get things just right so be it.