What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?

@lewm 

100VA transformer into 2 Farads to make 5VDC! What rectification?

Personally, I am much more interested in the capacitor technology!  

2 Farads is comparable to DS Audio’s higher-end Equalizers.  With the custom capacitors they use, this much capacitance weighs about 20-kgs.  The less the separation between the capacitor 'plates', the greater the capacitance but also the greater the risk of leakage and premature failure.  Mr. Nixie claims similar capacitance in a much lighter package, if I am reading the specifications correctly.

As for the transformer rating, their most expensive Equalizer uses three transformers, but I have not been able to discover their VA rating.

My SoulNote Equalizer scrapes by with 

A 260VA non-impregnated large toroidal transformer is incorporated into the phono equalizer. Darlington ripple filter circuits, fast recovery diodes, and ten parallel 1,000μF filter capacitors combine in a non-NFB power supply 

260-VA, on paper at least, is ten times overkill for a unit that consumes 24-Watts, given that Watts approximates VA.

Earlier in this thread you posted calculations giving the capacitance required to smooth various output voltages.  With respect, your formulae did not factor in the acceptable ripple level on the output.  Adding more capacitance asymptotically reduces ripple and in that sense you are only subject to the law of diminishing returns in terms of cost, weight, volume.

Also, the more current extracted from the power supply, the greater the ripple will be.  So overkill is good.

*Non-NFB means negative feedback is not used

How’s the new cartridge doing @richardbrand 

Any changes while it’s breaking in?

@audphile1 

Unfortunately for my audio pleasure, I have been back in Sydney since Sunday so no further progress on the break in to report.  At least, I did not break it during installation.

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the low noise floor and muted reaction to record imperfections like tics, pops, crackles and scratches are a singular property of DS Audio cartridges.  But I am not used to LOMC.

Looking forward to hearing from @rajugsw on this.

Meanwhile from HFN-Oct-DS-Audio-Grand-Master-Extreme_Reprint-LOW.pdf

Despite my adoration of Decca, Soundsmith and Koetsu pick-ups, HFN Feb ’21 saw me write, ‘The Grand Master is so truly supreme in resolution, transparency, spatial recreation, neutrality and any other parameter I can name that it’s impossible for me to not say what I usually try to avoid: “This may be the best cartridge I’ve ever heard”’. This time, I cannot deny: the Grand Master Extreme is even better

@richardbrand 

Have you found that it sounds better after the first couple of albums?

@richardbrand as you go up in quality of LOMC cartridges the noise level drops. 
I first experienced it going from Goldring E3 MM to Hana EL. But then moving up to Hana ML was even a bigger drop in noise floor. 
The next model up the Hana Line, the Umami Blue is even quieter. I just heard it over the weekend. One other thing I noticed is the boron cantilever on the Blue is much thinner than its aluminum counterpart on ML. The stylus on the Blue is also finer than the ML’s or at least it looked that way to me (both the ML and the Blue feature microline stylus shape).

There are also other notable differences that contribute to lower noise.

I’m not sure how DS Audio does it or if it does anything special or it’s the equalizer that helps or both.
That is the next level listening experience we should be getting from the higher priced, higher quality cartridges and phono stages