Good moving magnet or cheap moving coil

Grados and Linns often don't mix electrically. Caution.

Best MM is the Clearaudio Virtuoso - good price with any trade at the Elusive Disc - check out the site. I own one.

What was the impedance of your cartridge? What is the input ipedance of your phono stage> You could very easily have a impedance mismatch. Happens all the time.

Thin, wooly bass could be a VTA adjustment problem.

I used Sumiko BPS and found this cartridge not realy sencitive to VTA unless you go for extreams and I can assume that the author of this discussion is using mm settings for this cartridge which is entirely right.

This cartridge has everything from analytical point of view except music. It would never sound live no-matter what effort will you apply. It's an entry-level for christ sake.

Linn LP12 deserves a better more musical cartridge and $600 is the right budget for even descent mc cartridge.