What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?

@dogberry 

The NuVista Vinyl is not noisy at all

Musical Fidelity has an excellent reputation in my part of the world.  My dealer has a reputation as one of the five best in the world, and the salesman was his son.  He could have chosen many phono stages, but used a solid-state Musical Fidelity phono stage, either the Mx6 or the Mx8, as a reasonable equivalent of my Krell preamplifier.  The Mx6 and the Mx8 look very similar, but the Mx8 is fully balanced.

I think I was hearing thermal noise but a fair bit more than I was used to because of the high gain needed for Moving Coil cartridges.  Reviewers of DS Audio cartridges have commented that they have been unaware of this noise, until it was not there anymore.

It seems to me that there is an engineering trade-off with Low Output Moving Coil designs.  The designers want low mass in the moving parts, to better follow the groove to extract more low-level information.  Low mass inevitably means less output (unless the technology can be changed), which requires more amplification. This in turn comes at the expense of magnified noise which tends to obscure the extra detail.  The designers try for the best compromise.

At the risk of endless repetition, DS Audio has changed the technology by adding external power to the cartridge, allowing it to output a much higher voltage signal.  More voltage, same noise, better signal to noise ratio.

Thermal noise (Johnson-Nyquist noise) is the voltage/current noise caused by the random thermal agitation of charge carriers (electrons) inside an electrical conductor. It is present in all electronic circuits at non-zero temperatures, independent of applied voltage

@maxson 

In fact, the sound of pops and clicks was a little more prominent, with less definition 

That's the exact opposite of my experience, compared with two MM cartridges.

There are still audible pops and clicks, but far less noticeable. Records I rejected as unplayable because of noise have been redeemed, and even enjoyable.

What is different between our set ups?

@richardbrand pops and clicks are less audible with DS003 most likely due to the line contact stylus shape. Pops and clicks tend to live closer to the surface rather than in the groove, unless you have a record that was played way too many times or played on a bad set up that caused damage to the grooves. It might not have as much to do with type of cartridge being optical. Pretty sure the lower model DS audio with shibata stylus would be noisier than your ds003. 
 

RB, MI type cartridges can have high output, albeit not in the level of an optical, with moving mass lower than MC, and therefore are very quiet, with an ancillary dependence upon stylus shape. MI cartridges and their like have lowest moving mass, not MC. I guess I have said this before.  Sorry.

@audphile1 

Pretty sure the lower model DS audio with shibata stylus would be noisier than your ds003

That's exactly why I went one notch up the scale. 

My Micro-line styli are excellent at bridging wear gaps in the groove on my old records.

But everything I read says the optical mechanism has a lot to do with noise reduction.  Imagine driving down an Australian bush track with the occasional pothole or rock.  Hit one of them, and there is a momentary jolt (rapid change of velocity) but not much change in position.  Electromagnetic cartridges respond to velocity, whereas optical respond to position.

Sooner or later, to continue this discussion sensibly, you are going to have to get your hands on an optical cartridge plus Equalizer, and I am going to have to get a Moving Coil.  Who will be going backwards?