Cartridge Opinions - Sorry

OP
For everyday use, I prefer a more laid back sound and not too in your face. The Benz Micro Wood is an excellent choice giving me plenty of detail and air, it's well balanced, and doesn't draw too much attention to itself. You can get a bargain on the Benz from a seller here on Agon.

I can say the same for another cartridge, the Audio Technica AT33PTG/II, though some will dismiss it because of its low price. It's very well balanced and not lit in the highs like some of the other Audio Technica models. This cartridge was very easy to dial for me requiring little tinkering to sound really good.

@atmasphere 
What tonearm adjustments do you view as necessary to be considered a good tonearm for yourself?

Dear @klooker : You own very good electronics that I know very well too. Your system deserves the best cartridge you can buy and obviously you deserve it too.

You don’t will have problems for future cartridge service with any of the cartridges I linked and probably before 1K-1.5K hours you will up gradedd the cartridge you buy today.

If you can go with the Windfeld pull the triger with. This is a cartridge that beats LOMC cartridges in the 5K dollars and competes with the big boys in the 10+K.

The Ittok can handle it. Don't go with the cartridge mediocrity/average level/range.

R.

Makes sense, yet industry pushed the concept that MC was superior to MM, possibly the case for LOMC, 5 years ago I don't recall seeing the LOMC / HOMC terminology much spreaded, as I remember your posts were the first I found here advocating for vintage MM.
Thanks Chak

I have at least 2-3 High Output MC cartridges (still have two of them), I must say I enjoyed using them, but later found much better LOMC and MM, MI. 

Even with MM some people always like high output, don't know why, some people think louder is better (I do not agree).  

 

What tonearm adjustments do you view as necessary to be considered a good tonearm for yourself?

@scar972 The reason I like the Triplanar is that its so adjustable. You can dial in the VTA (the VTA tower pioneered by Triplanar is now seen in a variety of different arms) with great ease and on-the-fly, you can adjust the azimuth, you can even adjust the mechanical resonance. The bearings are in the same plane as the LP surface; this allows for a more constant tracking pressure when dealing with warp and bass modulation. I think the ability to mess with the mechanical resonance is what I find most valuable because the mass of a cartridge is always a variable in that; this means that the arm works with a wider range of cartridges.


To give you an idea of what that's about, I used to have a Graham 2.2. I tried using a Grado wood body cartridge in that arm and encountered something called the 'Grado dance' although this is not something that is a particular fault of Grados (which are a great cartridge) or for that matter the arm. This was simply because the arm mass in tandem with the suspension of the cartridge could set up a resonance (particularly noticeable at the beginning of the LP, where the resonance could cause the stylus to leap out of the groove). In addition the cartridge would mistrack when the music got more intense.The Triplanar has a similar mass, but by setting up the counterweights correctly the problem is avoided entirely and the Grados track effortlessly in that arm.