Moving Magnet Phono Cartridges

Resurrecting this old thread… Now we have the Nagaoka MP 700 moving iron cartridge, which gets excellent reviews and is most certainly better than the MP 500

Peter, from where do you derive your certainty? Have you heard both? I am about to visit Tokyo and am tempted by the 700 even though I’m happy with the 500.

@lewm I own both the 500 and 700 and much prefer the 700. The 700 throws a bigger soundstage, has more detailed highs and tighter bass. I purchased my 700 in the US, but was recently in Tokyo and picked up an extra 700 stylus at Yodo. 

I just bought an Audio Technica ML180 with supposedly only 60 hours on it. I was looking at all the new recommendations, like Nagaoka, Hana etc. but got this instead . Not sure how it stacks up to the new stuff, but I have owned the ML170 years ago and thought it was as great. 

I just read this review of the Nagaoka MP 700

https://www.hifinews.com/content/nagaoka-mp-700-cartridge-lab-report

excerpt, amazing Imaging Specs, and descriptions to convey how it sounds.

"Otherwise, output is a medium 3.8mV (re. 1kHz/5cm/sec), channel balance is far tighter than the spec’d 1dB at 0.3dB and channel separation is a huge 40dB through the midrange. The asymmetry between lateral vs. vertical responses [black vs. red, Graph 1] emphasises strong central stereo images, the latter with a ‘brighter’ +1.3dB treble lift, the former dropping to –2.5dB/20kHz. The stereo response [dotted trace] is remarkably uniform and extended with a mild –1dB decline from 1kHz down to 20Hz and a ‘flat’ ±0.5dB above 1kHz, reaching well beyond 20kHz. Distortion is exceptionally low [Graph 2] achieving a sub-3% stereo THD from 20Hz-20kHz (–8dB re. 5cm/sec) and a peak of <7% at ~10kHz from vertical (L-R) cuts. A worthy flagship!"