Rotating Carts


Wondering if you have a few carts not in head shells if it is best to rotate them to extend life or just wear one out and replace?

stoplitz

Not sure how much real difference that would make. I have a dozen MC carts and use primarily my favorite; seldom rotate other carts in and out. 

I wanted and finally got complete flexibility with 3 arms, all removable headshells. The more flexibility, the easier it is to listen to my small collection, and have friends bring their cartridges, and my spinner maintains speed even if all 3 arms are in the grooves, so comparing in seconds is just a matter of rotating the selector A,B,C on my SUT, 

latest, 3 removable headshells

prior, only 1 removable headshell

For me, the ease of change is far more important than the 'idea' of fixed or longer being better.

I spent a few years running multiple cartridges on tonearms with removable headshells. On my Scheu table I had two Dynavector DV505 arms that could be run into the same phono stage, and easily compare cartridges. That whole gig become less appealing over time. Eventually I decided I wanted the best analog i could afford, and sold my arms and cut down my cartridge collection to 3 pieces. 

I sold my SME V that was on my Sota Cosmos Eclipse, I sold both the Dynavectors, and a Scheu CB-1L I owned. I bought an Origin Live Eclipse for the Sota. The Schue got a 12" Audiomods Series 6 arm, and another Audiomods 10.5" Series 6 arm. 

After evaluating cartridges I kept a Transfiguration Audio Proteus and a OG Kiseki Blackheart. I bought a Benz Micro Glider H2 to go into the onboard phono stage of the Trinnov preamp I use. 

The Kiseki and Transfiguration sound lovely, and I could live with either cartridge as my only one. They do sound a bit different, but if you listen a bit the ear adjusts and both sound "right". The Glider sounds good, its my casual player, but the phono stage limits it, and I sometimes wonder why i even have it set up. 

The reality is my digital playback is very close to the Glider set up. I listen to digital on weekdays before work, and before bed. Vinyl usually gets played on the weekend. With so little playing time, why have so much invested in analog? I don't have a good answer for that. But at this time I am pretty content with the pieces I do have, and have no interest in rotating through a horde of cartridges, especially ones that are significantly limited in one facet or another.