Soundsmith Straingauge SG-200 cartridge system

Doug, sorry to combine your comments with Arran's to draw a false conclusion. However you do say that the Straingauge will be a v.different listening experience to the Orpheus. Can you elaborate further?

Doug, re-reading your comments I get the impression that you feel the Straingauge is a thinner, 'whiter' sounding cart than the range of MCs you listed. Do you have any experience of the Decca London Reference which is an MC but loads like a MM at 47kOhms? This is the cart of choice of the tt/arm designer of my rig.
Additionally, I'm going to dig out my old Orpheus and reassess it.

I've never heard a Decca London Ref, sorry.

The original SG I heard (at RMAF a few years ago) had oodles of dynamics, a full frequency range, speed, weight, heft, etc. Everything it did it did well and nothing was distorted. However, it lost or severely attenuated the complex harmonics we're used to hearing on two familiar Vivaldi and Handel LP's. FWIW, we hear similar behavior from most SS phono stages and amps. Even the best ones we've heard (like Raul's original Essential phono/line stage) lose the lowest levels of musical harmonics. They simply fall below the sound floor of the component and are not retrieved.

People who listen to rock or other amplified/electronically manipulated music might not notice or care. We listen almost entirely to classical, with a heavy emphasis on original/early instrument recordings. Reproducing harmonic complexities with completeness and accuracy is essential to reproducing the actual sound of such music.

My resident physics/materials science genius predicted harmonic attenuation before we ever heard the SG. According to him it's virtually inevitable due to the the nature of strain gauges (don't ask me to explain the science, I'd make a fool of myself).

***
Lew,

We haven't heard an Astatic. I'll have to dig around the pile to remind myself what that MM is. I do remember that Paul and I both said that no sub-$2K LOMC that we've heard outplayed it in any significant way. A steal at 1/10 the price (whatever it is, lol).

OTOH, the MI we auditioned a couple years ago was unlistenable (to us). Paul instantly stood up and left the room, a familiar sign that something was seriously flawed and paining his hyper-sensitivity. I struggled along for a couple of LPs, tweaking this and that. I gave up once I realized that what I was trying to fix (a phase-shifted echo or ghost of each waveform) was inherent and unfixable.

It took me 30 minutes to figure that out. It took Paul 30 seconds. That's a fair estimate of the proportion between our hearing and our IQ's. ;)

Paul knew nothing about this cartridge except what he heard, not even the name. At dinner he asked, "What kind of cartridge was that? It must employ a different technology than MM or MC to behave like that. Does it work by induction or something?"

He scares me sometimes.

What? I thought everyone knew that induction sounds funny.
But seriously, folks, I have no idea what Paul heard, because my auditory acuity, or lack thereof, is more like yours than his, but I do think I hear a certain character in MI cartridges vs the other two major types. For that matter, I think we could easily agree that MMs sound "different" from MC, as a class. Having said that, I am sure I could be fooled in a single-blind test, if I had to guess whether I was listening to an MM, MI, or MC. Which gets us back to Moving Flux (MF). Astatic is the only one I know about, unless MF is synonymous with Induced Magnet, a la some Grado and Acutex products.

There are good MI cartridges as well as bad ones, I'm sure.

Spiritofmusic,
I wouldn't touch a Decca. I have set up and listened to probably 15-20 samples, mostly tweaked by Garrot Bros. They have no cantilver, no compliance, and require robust tonearms to manage them. Although they are blindingly quick, they are unforgiving of suboptimal set up and at worst damage records when not set up properly. They load best at around 22k. Best arms are Zeta's, Ekos.
With regard to the 103 option, I prefer the 103 to the 103R which can sound overly warm and rolled off. I ran a 103 modified with Boron cantilever and Weinz Parabolic tip in an ET2 air bearing arm and this was superbly musical. I could happily go back to this from my Ikeda/Koetsu Black/Dynavector Nova 13D all of which are much more expensive.
I also note on the ET high compliance Moving Magnets worked amazingly well and should not be discounted.
My suggestion would be to try your current cartridges first as is before you make any decisions.