I cannot say enough about the KAB Concorde STY40 combo

Didn't Ortofon make an "audiophile/non DJ" version of the concorde back in the day?

The Original Concorde was an MC cartridge and that version was an audiophile grade. Concorde MC200 is Moving Coil cartridge.

Now Concorde is MM

Neat to know that the original was MC. I'm surprised, with all the new general consumer TT buyers, Plug in Play cartridges has not made a comeback. I guess with so many entry-level tables delivered with cartridges installed, it may be a mute point.

The original Concordes for Audio use (not DJ) were super-light — by eliminating the headhsell, and the ’mechanical advantage’ of a 9-inch arm mulitplying the h’shell’s weight. Ortofon included a different, very small counterweight with the cartridge to compensate for this — it was about 80% lighter than the SME II c-wts I was using at the time, IIRC.

This markedly changed the arm’s effective mass, and may have led to so many gold-eared-audiophiles saying it was a lousy cartridge.

I never used one long enough to judge: I loaned it a friend and set it up for him, and it sounded very good on the SME/Thorens 125, through McIntosh pre- and power, and Martin Logan CLS-Z. The arm/TT, power-amp and speakers were mine, on indefinite loan (he was a good friend). Only the preamp was his.

Sadly he died... and died very sadly. The Executor of his estate believed me, but didn’t care that they were mine. However, she said I was welcome to bid on my own equipment at the estate auction.

She’d even give me a 10% discount if I bid the most for my own stuff and won.

I gave it a miss.

 There also was the Ortofon cartridge for the SME series III that incorporated the arm wand model 30M.

https://www.ortofon.com/sme-30h-p-875