Can a Nagaoka MP500 be converted to an MP700?

Interesting how a lot of folk on this forum are able to make a definitive statements on something they’ve never heard. I guess when you are spending someone else’s money, it’s easy to throw out anything that comes into your head.

The 700 is radically different from the 500, much better top end, no droop.

Dover, good point about the frequency response. I read the same in a review. I would think/hope that the improvement in high end response would transfer with the stylus assembly, but maybe not if it’s a function of the generator. Another cartridge that interests me is the new Ortofon mentioned by Pindac. MX50, I think.

To some others: I never claimed, nor do i believe, that the Nagaoka cartridges are “best”.  Thanks for all the input(s). I saw the Phasemation pp200 at Yodobashi, too.

@lewm 

From an actual user of the MP700

Only a few days of listening in (on a Technics 1210G, VTF 1.4, VTA 0) but it's immediately obvious that this is not the MP-500: far greater resolution and extension, more neutral than warm, bigger soundstage, closer to a great modern MC (I'm comparing the MP-700 to the Phasemation PP-500 only because that's what I was last listening to) than another really good MI/MM. I'll try to update my impressions as the cart breaks in.

just to put in here, if you don't have a phono stage that can either have enough gain or do justice to a higher end MM or MC low or high output cartridge, then you'll have another investment to make - which will probably be more than the cartridge...

I think that goes without saying, Katzie. The best part is each of us can define for himself or herself whether the phono stage can “do justice”.