Good moving magnet or cheap moving coil

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.

every cartridge is sensitive to VTA.

Maxgain, I used this cartridge for just enough hours to break it in and than sold due to the desire of more live music from my vinyls.

Maybe I did not provide enough experimentation with it in terms of VTA but the only differences I heard is at extreams of my Michell VTA for Rega arm.

I played with an antiskate which gave me more 3D and tightness applying just minimal for the best results.

I have to admit that mounting and tuning-up with higher-end cartridges is even more complicated since they "feel" any missalignement in setup much more.

I spend pretty large amount of time properly setting up Lyra Helikon cartridge.