Best MM?

chakster

... the founder of the Grado himself (Joseph Grado, not John Grado who's his son ...

John is not Joseph Grado's son; he is his nephew.

The "Chrisma" costs more than this highly regarded MC, and whoever buys it figures it's worth the price; what I'm saying, is that the market place determines the price, and how much a cartridge is worth.

Chakster's point is that 'the market' has simply not HEARD the performance of the really great MM cartridges from 'The Golden Age of Analogue' and is only able to compare the 'current' MM cartridges to the 'current' MC cartridges.

I have compared directly, on the same turntables with the same tonearms, cables, phonostages etc......many of the recent LOMC cartridges (VdH Grasshopper, Helikon, Titan i, Koetsu Urishi, ZYX UNIverse, XV-1s, Atlas) against not only the great MM cartridges from the 'Golden Age'.....but also the great LOMCs from the 'Golden Age' (Ortofon SPU-Ae Gold, Fidelity Research FR-7f, Sony XL-55 and XL-88, JMAS MIT-1) and I agree with Chakster.
Not only are the great vintage MM cartridges better than the current ones, they are better than any of the recent $4000-$15000 LOMC cartridges I have heard.....and so are the great vintage LOMCs.

To Chakster's list of great vintage MMs....I would add:-

• Garrott P77/SAS
  
• Victor Z1/SAS
  
• Signet TK-7LCa
  
• Signet TK-7SU
  
• Shure ML-140HE
  
• Signet MR5.0Lc
  
• Empire 4000D/III Gold
  
• Shure V15/Type III/SAS
  
• Acutex LPM420-STR
  
• Victor 4MD-1X
  
• Victor 4MD-20X
  

These great cartridges are all still available either 'used' or 'NOS' from EBay or Japan Yahoo for less than $1000 and often less than $500 and it just requires patience and persistence for anyone to acquire them.

Chakster's mission (and I admire him for it) is to point audiophiles to even better analogue sound than is available with the current 'overpriced' MC cartridges on the market.

If I was going to acquire one vintage MM to compare with the Audio Note IQ3, which would it be?  It must be compatible with a Kuzma 4Point (13g) and be somewhat easy to find, preferably NOS.

I am sure that MC people will profoundly disagree. I am also sure that some of them tried many both MM and MC cartridges from all time periods. I am very neutral in this debate and couldn't care less about which ones are better or just different. But let's cut BS, anyone I have heard of who has truly high-end set up uses MCs. Certainly there might be many others I haven't heard of who prefer MMs, vintage or not. It is also hard just by reading posts to figure out who has'got good hearing and who has not. Hard but not always impossible. And no sales pitches, please.

Chakster,
+1 Joe should have been proud of the XTC. It is a great cartridge. 

Halcro,
+1 for the empire 4000 d/iii gold. In my system it has a little more precision than the XTC. That said, the XTC is probably closer to live music in that I don't hear instrument in precise locations at concerts.

FWIW, I picked up a NOS ebony virtuoso for cheap money & although it's not completely broken in yet is showing true potential. It's closer to the empire in regard to presentation. I mounted it on a new headshell with silver wire, so I've still got about 40 hours before making a true comparison.