"You spent how much on that cartridge?"

I am not a cartridge man but I suppose different music can sound best with different cartridges. 30 would be too many for me but five might not.

I had this kind of experience with RCA cables when I had solid state phono stage. Now with VAC's onboard MM phono stage I don't need additional cables at all. Nottingham Space Arm's wiring goes straight into the amp.

Does it make sense to put a $15K cartridge on a $2k turntable? I haven’t heard of anyone who has tried that.  The other way around, vice-versa, in reverse, might be better.  Unless that’s backwards.

Does it make sense to put a $15K cartridge on a $2k turntable? I haven’t heard of anyone who has tried that.  The other way around, vice-versa, in reverse, might be better.  Unless that’s backwards.

A Koetsu Platinum stone on a vintage 1980s SOTA Star w/ FR64fx arm sounds amazing. That's not exactly 2K / 15K but it's close. I've done the reverse too: $2K-ish cart on 15K or 30K table, and it was great too but I'll take the old SOTA / Koetsu in those instances. You can do this equation a million different ways with other makes & models, and observe great variance in the results. As I was taught early on in Computer Science at GA Tech in the 1990s - the answer is always: "it depends". 

I am British school. First you get PRAT and dynamics right and then do the rest. And to accomplish that you do need great table to begin with. And this great table unfortunately cannot cost $2k new these days. Probably starts with $4k or $5k. Then you might want to put your $15k cartridge in, not forgetting excellent arm, of course. I would not do it but there is no reason why it shouldn't sound good.