Turntable versus tonearm versus cartridge: which is MOST important?

A lot of people use Hana’s on quite good TT’s in that price category, as an example.

Do you know Denon DL-103 ? It’s a $280 cartridge with Spherical tip, it was designed in the 60s, still in production. How can you explain the popularity of this model today?

Hana is another popular cartridge, it’s cheap, looks nice, people can’t find and buy Miyabi (or another state of the art Japanese carts) to compare it to the Hana which is aesthetically designed in a similar manner. But what they can compare is the price, when it’s $700 over $3000 the choice of the masses will be $700 (especially if a $700 cart looks nice).

You have to admit that popularity of a certain cartridge in North America or in Europe has nothing to do with popularity in Japan where Hana is just one of many cartridges made by Excel Sound Inc in the last 40 years.

Japanese got their own cartridges, but for some reason popularity of Danish SPU (or German EMT) is higher in Japan than in Europe.


In North America you got Stanton and Pickering and their top cartridges from the 80’s are superior in sound in comparison to many other cartridges in the same price range or higher, including Japanese and European carts (MM or MC). Do you think those high compliance MM with advanced profile (Stereohedron) are still popular in the USA like heavy low compliance Denon 103 with Conical tip made without any changes since the 60’s ? No, the Japanese DL-103 is more popular. Is it better ? No, Stanton and Pickering are much better cartridges. Popularity is nothing, personally I don’t care what other people are buying and why, if I can compare cartridges myself in my system.

Dear @op : ""  A lot of people use Hana's on quite good TT's in that price category...""

Any audiophile but an stupid or ignorant one never will buy a 500.00 Hana cartridge when his TT is 10K along maybe 3K for the tonearm and around 6K for the phono stage.

I know people with a 40K+ front end with Hana cartridge: Umami Red not your entry level one.


R.

After many years of using various tonearms including four different VPI arms, the 3D printed plastic arm included, I installed my first Reed 3P. It was an epiphanous moment. The huge sonic difference is no doubt due to the amazingly talented designer Vidmantas Triukas. The experience convinced me that if I had to choose between a $250,000 Tech Das table mated to lets say a VPI arm, which I believe to he kludged together pieces of junk, or a restored Garrard 301 with a Reed 3P, I would choose the latter every day of the week and Sunday too. It-the discovery and conclusion-was against all of my pre-conceived notions and assumptions. Enlightenment. May it come to you too. I am self-aware that this sounds arrogant on my part. But once you hear a really well designed arm there is no going back. 

Reed 3p is nice, I bought mine in Luthuania about 8 years ago, which version do you have? @fsonicsmith

I bought a demo version from them, it’s Cocobolo (18g effective mass) 12 inch, cryo treated copper wire. 

Luthuania you say. Where Lex Luthor lives? ;)