Notice That There Are Not Many Survivors of the MC from the early 19080's or so?

Dear @viridian   If I remember cartridges were designed/build by FR under Shinon specs.

I owned the Red Boron and the ruby cantilever named Saphic . Almost all the Shinon cartridges share a little problem ( especially the Red's ) with the suspension.

The Red had medium compliance and the  Saphic low one. The boron cantilever is better performers than the ruby one. As a fact Ruby only has a " name " but is not good material for LOMC cantilevers. Boron and even aluminum are prefered for.

@jasonbourne71   The Coral 777/Sleping Beauty is very good vintage cartridge and I still own.

The FR1 mk3 you named are so so.I owned along the better 702 and 7Fz but the best FR were designed years latter than the 7 series and design and cartridge body is way different to other FR cartridges as a fact those best FR cartridges were designed not for the FR chief but for two gentlemans that left FR and latter on founded Shelther. I own the design of these gentlemans.

​​​​​@neonknight   you only needs time and patience to find out the models you are looking for. Rigth now I'm listening the MC 3000 MK2 that you own and probably mine could performs a little better thatn your due that by accident I made in one cartridge body side a hole,yes a hole: ceramic is way delicated ( that hole could help with the internal resonances developed by the cartridge. Who really knows?).I still like a lot this cartridge.

R.

Nearly all of my cartridges are vintage, LOMC, HOMC and MM. I have many of what get mentioned here and some that are not. Still have two Shure V15, a III and a IV, one original stylus and one Jico. I recently picked up two Empire 4000 cartridges after reading what Raul had to say about them (at least I think it was Raul). One is 4000DIII and the other 4000XLI, I have yet to hear either of them but look forward to trying them out. Also have Denon DL109R, which is a nice sounding cartridge but I'm not overly fond of conical stylii and may have it refitted with a microline or something similar if that makes any sense. I also have a Nagatron 185e, which is decent. 

Have a Sumiko  Virtuoso Diamond Titanium vdh HOMC, which is a nice cartridge, a Sumiko Talisman S, LOMC, Linn Karma LOMC, Fidelity Research FR1 MKIII F, which I always liked very much (I don't understand Raul's dislike for them) and the newest that I have is AT33PTG/II LOMC, which for the money, I think is very good. Still breaking mine in and am impressed so far. I may have more that I've forgotten, I've certainly had more over the years. Anyway, that's a few oldies and I think a lot of others are still using them or similar old cartridges.

Dear @billpete   : Yes, about the 4000D3 was me and if it’s in good operation condition you will be satisfied with.

In thje other side it’s not that I don’t like the FR1 but that the 7Fz and latest way different cartridge bodies are better and even the 4000D3  with a good match tonearm  could be superior.

As you I owned 150+ cartridges ( vintage and today ), so I have a ladder gradation for overall quality performance to make comparisons and the FR1 it’s not at the top.

Along those each one of us have our special MUSIC/Audio targets and priorities to listen to.

Any one of you that has interest of top vintage LOMC cartridge try to find out ( very rare ) the Empire MC5 and if you found out any one of you will be surprised of its very high quality performance: it's addictive and unique .

R.

Audiogon Discussion Forum

Amazing performer.

R.