Reasonable moving coil cartridge

@bajaed 

In my opinion and personal experience....  

I haven't heard a Dyna 10X5.  I know some audiophiles whose opinion I trust that say the OC9/II is as good as it gets under $1,000, but there have been a lot of advances in cartridges in the last few years and would question that opinion today.  I also know some audiophiles whose opinion I trust that say the Dyna carts flesh out musical instruments better than the better AT's.  But there are new AT's that they haven't heard.  

Comparing the 10X5 HOMC to the OC9/II is also comparing a HOMC to a LOMC.  IMO, the LOMC would have an advantage, everything else being equal.  But the LOMC requires a phono stage with higher gain.  

My ears say that the only cartridges I'm happy with besides the AT's (and not all those) are the Lyra carts (and not all of those).    

I suggest that when it's time to replace your 10X5, you consider An OC9.  Maybe even one of the new ones.  There's even a new one with a Shibata stylus profile.  

The Ortofon Quintet Red is a great sounding MC cartridge. It just is. 350 bucks or so.

Chakster,
Somehow in Lithuania we do have 2 masters who works with cartridges. I do know both in person. And had an opportunity to listen of some of their works. One of them is my friend and once he did prototype in two versions one nude 0,5 mil conical another is contact line. Manufacturer was the same Namiki as I do recall from my memories. And CL version was inferior from the first shot. So it's not so easy to get into. It's like a cuisine in which you are extracting taste with different additives. 

And if you'll look into low compliance and LOMC cartridges sometimes cuisine leads conical profile. Perfect example is Denon DL103 with 0.65 mil conical. Weakness of Denon DL 103 isn't the conical tip itself but as it mass product it has huge variation of quality from sample to sample. Some of these are really good ones, some of them are bad ones. All is the matter of taste, like in cuisine.

As about lifetime of tip you are right. But better to check is it nude polished one or bonded one, it gives better quality idea. I won't change 0.5 mil nude conical into 0.2x0,7 elliptical bonded in any case.

Chackster is right, your budget, go for MM with advanced stylus shape.

I had an existing Shure body, so I added a new Stylus: Jico SAS stylus shape/boron cantilever. Nice MM with decently high 3.0 mV output. You could look at finding a vintage cartridge body (with or without stylus), and replace the stylus. With stylus? don’t plan on it, but you might get lucky

I also have and very much like Audio Technica 440ml, Advanced MicroLine shape. I agree, currently available Audio Technica VM540ML is a great choice, only $250. 4.0 mV output, user replaceable stylus.

https://www.audio-technica.com/cms/cartridges/e7a3d4bc8b248b64/index.html

Cantilever is aluminum, a reasonable compromise to get in budget

So after further review, and having a bit of extra money in my pocket from some unused cash bonuses from work, I am going with the following:

• Fluance RT84 turntable: $449 (USD) - I couldn’t justify spending an extra $50USD on the acrylic platter.

• Ortofon Quintet Red: $274.00 (USD) - It was a toss-up between this and the Denon. But since the bulk of my music is jazz bass/guitar, this seemed like a best choice.

• Marantz CD6006 CD: $465.00 (USD) - Sadly, this is the only piece of gear available locally.

Total cost: $1188.00
The Fluance comes with an Ortofon Blue 2M cartridge (MM Elliptical). Ebay will be a good place to recoup about $100.00
Now all I need to do is figure out how to hide the boxes from the CFO when they arrive on the doorstep. The things we do for our obsession.