Can a Nagaoka MP500 be converted to an MP700?

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”.

Lewm, change of subject, how is Japan now?  I have not been back since 2016.  Wonderful country.  If I didn't have a wife and new daughter to come home to during in my Navy days, I would have swapped duty with a guy over there and probably stayed forever.  That was near the end of the Vietnam era for us, 1974.