Reasonable moving coil cartridge


I am looking to purchase a Music Hall 1.5 TT. The selling point being a removable headshell. 

That being said, i am looking for a reasonably priced moving coil cartridge to use on the MH. My preamp is the Bryston 1B- MC. I am not looking to refinance my house. Something in the neighborhood of $200-300 USD. I dont need to worry about a moving coil amplifier as the MC comes with one built in.

thanks
jcipale
Any LOMC about less than $800 or so is probably not going to be any better than a good MM or MI cartridge.

Go with MM or MI, with something like a Nagaoka MP300 or MP500 or Ortofon 2M black or Godring 2400 (or similar). You can get them almost half price on ebay. Only a few weeks ago, on ebay, I found an MP500 for less than $250 with a broken stylus and got an MP300 stylus for it.

Note that although these "esoteric" styli types (line contact, shibata etc), are highly touted, some are EXTREMELY finnicky to set up to get their angles correct. An elliptical or an hyper elliptical will be much less sensitive to this (and much cheaper). MP500 will accept either an 300 or a 500 styli. 2M black will also work perfectly well with a 2M blue stylus too.

At my teenage years of 62, I doubt I can hear the nuances any cartridge can offer which is more than about 300 bucks.

second @merosen40 - owned them both and they are excellent entry level cartridges for the money. That was two years ago and as most of here know, I fell into the rabbit hole and started to upgrade my TT and cartridges. And I can tell you that from experience (now Linn Sonedek LP12 with Koetsu Black cartridge - bought used) that there is noticeable difference in all aspects of ugrading your sound experience, turntable included. The trick IMHO is to first make a slight upgrade change (as you are), spend some time enjoying your new sound, for more than a while...then and only then begin to upgrade components that match your system. AND listen to this group in its entirety, there are some really experience audiophile people who have been in your exact shoes...maybe the better question to ask the group is you are interested in purchasing a new TT with cartridge for $X dollars and like the idea of a removable head. I think you will get some great answers. Enjoy the ride !!
Look on Ebay for an AT-12sa vintage cartridge you can find NOS for around $200.00 - $300.00 I picked one up a couple of months ago for $155.00 and then bought a NOS original stylus for another $55.00Shibata stylus MMOr if you want to spend a little more you can look for a vintage NOS AT-15sa for around $250.00 then just buy a NOS stylus for around
another $150.00 - $200.00Best yet upgrade your TT to at least an MH 3.3 or 5.3 TT otherwise as stated above just wasting your money on a cartridge that is going on an economy TT
I will second both the audio technica at-f7 @ $259 currently on Amazon. I will also highly recommend the Hana EL @ $475! The Hana is absolutely wonderful for the money. At elusive disc.com they are running a special right now on the hana @ I believe $427 if you trade in any brand working or non working cartridge. If I were you I’d go with the Hana and just buy a cheap pos cartridge off Ebay for 7 or 8 bucks and use it as trade in value towards the Hana. Otherwise, for the money, you will find none better for the price of the aforementioned audio technica F-7. Look at the review of the AT @ whathifi....the people telling you that you need to spend over 800 bucks to get a good M/C cartridge are full of crap! Maybe that was how it used to be, but not now....we live in a wonderful time to be an audiophile...there are extraordinary bargains to be had....