Analogue front end. You want more weight, scale and dynamics.Where do you start upgrading?

I recently put my first MC cart on my TT, a Hana ML. While I was very impressed with the top end detail, I felt the lower midrange weight and bass impact were lacking. My phonostage (Sutherland 20/20) gain moves in 6db steps, 58db to 64db at the top end. While 58db sounded best, various dance and rock albums felt a little too laid back to me. I started to suspect that maybe this cart/phono combo wasn’t the best match, and the ideal gain might actually be 60 or 62 db as 64 was clearly too much. 
In debating my next move I considered a new phono, a different cart, and SUTs. After some demos I brought home an SUT and got things set up. This instantly brought the low end impact and lower weight bass back into the mix. Exactly what I was hoping for. Also seemed to smooth out some occasional edgy highs as well, making rough recordings much more enjoyable. 

That’s what worked for me. I suggest really digging into your specific equipment matching and trying some things to find what works for you. Best of luck! 

Yeah, assuming that the cartridge is reasonably good, as counter-intuitive as it is, cartridge is the least important element in turntable set up. I have the impression that many people get it wrong and prematurely upgrade cartridges. Similar things happen with speakers. You have no idea how your speakers can sound until you give them the right signal.

There is nothing "wrong" with picking cartridge as the #1 priority. It can work out great - as it did for me when I added a Koetsu Onyx onto my 1990s SOTA Star. It was probably the most satisfying single upgrade I could have done at that time. There are a million ways to go about analog. Feel free to pick a religious stance on this, but the reality across multiple systems is far more malleable. Same goes for the speakers example.

Religious stance ? OK, so be it, I don't mind. But yes there is more than one way to lead to the same outcome. I just don't see tinkering with turntable based source as an art form and my approach is simple and straightforward. I will do artistry with tubes and speakers.

In other words, I see cartridge as a reel to reel deck's playback head. Nothing more, nothing less.

@inna You might try the platter pad. Many/most turntables don't have one that really does the job.

The job, in case its not clear, is to control resonance in the vinyl. To do that the pad has to be able to absorb energy at all frequencies (not just some) and to do that the most effectively it must be the same hardness as the LP.

Its really a good idea to damp the platter as well and a good platter pad can do that too. The difference in sound is exactly what you are asking for in your opening post.

Oracle makes a platter pad that does this job very well. Pads that don't work are made of cork, rubber, felt, carbon fiber and also raw platters made of metal. That's a lot of platter pads!

The thing is if the LP talks back to the cartridge you simply can't fix it anywhere downstream starting with the cartridge itself. So this has to be fixed first.