Best phono cartridge for 4412s?

[J T]

I want get back into playing my vinyl, but I haven't been able to find a cartridge which mates well with my system. The turntable is a Technics SL-1700. I'm running both a 4412 and an L-110 in each front channel, powered by an Adcom 555 through a Mac C27 preamp. I've been listening to uncompressed music through my HRT MusicStreamer II+ DAC, or on my Marantz CD player. Friends have been generous with cartridge loans. I've tried a Shure M97XE (a bit too bright), a Grado Gold (sounds great, but hums when the cartridge is near the rim of the turntable), a Nagaoka MP-110 (nice and detailed but too bright and lacking a nice, solid bottom). I've even tried an old Stanton 500, which made all the vocals sound a little like AM radio. I'd like something with solid bass, nice open mid-range detail and a clean, but not overly-forward high end. Can anyone suggest other cartridges that would mate well with what I'm running, and give me that great JBL presence and detail without overloading on heavily-recorded passages? Can anyone here offer thoughts on the Audio Technica or Ortofon units mate with JBLs? I listen mostly to vintage material from '55 to '85. I'd like to keep the cartridge at $200 or less. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[BMWCCA]

Welcome to the Lansing forum!

You're looking to purchase a cartridge that works well with your speakers? Seems kind of backward to me. :banghead:
(I wonder how we ever made it this far in our Hi-Fi hobby!)

Why not just do like those who feel a record is just a compromise in high-frequency anyway and spend forty-bucks to plug in an Audio Technica AT95E and get on with enjoying the music? It seemed to work just fine as the standard cartridge on the Linn Basik turntable for a decade.

In over 50-years of JBL ownership I never really questioned my cartridge that much, beyond inspecting it with a microscope to make sure it was clean. I've had V15-II, M95e, and B&Os. My Linn came with the AT95E labeled "Linn" into which I stuck an AT95E stylus when I got it. My couple of B&Os obviously have their cartridges. I popped for a TEAC TN-300 when they were selling for under $200 and it came with the AT95E. I got over "fancy" tables decades ago and don't even remember where my last Thorens ended up with its V15. Didn't care, the cuing was so awful. Never considered if they worked well with the speakers, or not. They sounded just fine.

If you can't make yourself content with just about any cartridge with your JBLs, maybe ask the same question over at Hoffman's, go back to listening to your DAC, or get an EQ! Or turn down the L-pad on your 4412's titanium tweeter?
Good luck!

[Mr. Widget]

Welcome to the Lansing forum!
Then you kinda went off the rails.

J T is right to ask. Cartridges like speakers are electro-magnetic transducers and are the least accurate part of our systems... so are mics, but that is for the recording engineers to have fun with.

In anycase, I use an expensive low output moving coil cart from Lyra and am very happy with it, but I’m not sure which cartridges in the couple of hundred bucks range will work well for you. If the Shure sounded good but was too bright you should be able to correct that with adjusting the loading.


Widget

[Mannermusic]

Then you kinda went off the rails.

J T is right to ask. Cartridges like speakers are electro-magnetic transducers and are the least accurate part of our systems... so are mics, but that is for the recording engineers to have fun with.

In anycase, I use an expensive low output moving coil cart from Lyra and am very happy with it, but I’m not sure which cartridges in the couple of hundred bucks range will work well for you. If the Shure sounded good but was too bright you should be able to correct that with adjusting the loading.


Widget

MC is pretty much it. We found Ortofon to be pretty much the best of the best, years ago. After all, they are the ones who make the lathes, etc. Industry standard. Not cheap.

[J T]

Thanks for the welcome, BMWCCA.

You are 100% correct that the tweeters in the 4400 series are the issue. A lot of the vintage records I want to play were engineered with brightness bumps between 2.5 and 3.5K to compensate for the inherent high-end rolloff present in the hi-fi systems and radio broadcasts of the era. If you play this kind of material at satisfying volume levels, those otherwise decent tweeters can begin to sound a bit harsh, especially on some powerful female vocals. And, yes, I already pad the tweeters down a bit already, because even the cleanest remasterings of older material played through the DAC can have some of that harshness, too. In my short re-acquaintance with current phono cartridges, they seem to be brighter than I remember them. They seem to have been re-designed to sound "right" with modern recordings on modern equipment, which is quite logical for most listeners.

I was hoping that, among this group of enthusiasts who relish the wonderful sound one can experience only from vintage JBLs, that someone else had experienced my issue with older material and might have some thoughts on current cartridges with, perhaps, a less-aggressive high end which might be a bit more suited for tweeters as hot as the 4400 series JBL titanium tweeters.

Am I picky? You bet. Guilty as charged. All transducers and electronics have a certain sound, and some mate better with JBLs than others. I've tried a half-dozen DACs, several CD players, and several amps and pre-amps before adding pieces to my system. But the JBLs are the anchors. I wouldn't trade the JBL sound for anything. That said, some pieces of gear just sound better with the JBLs than others. Aside from the HRT DAC, adding the McIntosh C27 has made the biggest difference. Compared to other pre-amps from several eras, it just makes the JBLs come alive. At some point, I will find a cartridge that is a similarly harmonious match, too.

I hope this sheds a bit more light on my original comments.

[J T]

Thanks Mr. Widget and Mannermusic. I was responding to BMWCCA before your comments appeared. Thanks for the replays. I probably should at least try an MC unit. I'll have to decide if I want to pop for the bucks for absolute quality, I suppose.

I hadn't planned for vinyl to be my main source, just a fun addition. I have a few thousand old 45s, and I'd like to digitize some, and my wife wants to listen to all of her old Joni Mitchell albums from college. The sound of my digital material is so amazingly good that I doubt if I'll have more than a secondary dalliance with vinyl, so I'll have to prioritize here.

In a way, I sort of agree with BMWCCA; I never thought that cartridges would differ so much, or that finding the right one would be as involving as it's turned out to be.

[Mannermusic]

Thanks Mr. Widget and Mannermusic. I was responding to BMWCCA before your comments appeared. Thanks for the replays. I probably should at least try an MC unit. I'll have to decide if I want to pop for the bucks for absolute quality, I suppose.

I hadn't planned for vinyl to be my main source, just a fun addition. I have a few thousand old 45s, and I'd like to digitize some, and my wife wants to listen to all of her old Joni Mitchell albums from college. The sound of my digital material is so amazingly good that I doubt if I'll have more than a secondary dalliance with vinyl, so I'll have to prioritize here.

In a way, I sort of agree with BMWCCA; I never thought that cartridges would differ so much, or that oufinding the right one would be as involving as it's turned out to be.

Yep. Been there. Today, I'd have to start from scratch again - try to borrow Widgets Lyra for an audition!

[SEAWOLF97]

Welcome to the Lansing forum!


:eek::eek::eek: , I mostly agree with most of Phil's post (above).

except that he notes experience with a V-15 T2. That one has been meh'd by many reviewers.
The T3 & T4 rate much better, have a large following, are available and stay in your price range.

a good thread on carts.
http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?30855-Cartridge-Options

[grumpy]

Tried the M-97XE in an SL-1200Mk3 (not drastically dissimilar to your 1700)... various speakers... don't like it particularly. Some folks do.
(at least as compared to an old V-15 type V that I foolishly damaged :banghead:). I still use the M97 to play questionable records.


McIntosh C-27 (42dB gain phono stage)? You're going to want a cartridge with a healthy output (2mV+),
or add a 20dB "head amp" or transformer to match the phono stage of the C-27,
or add a MC compatible phono preamp and use a line input on the C-27.
C27 is 47k resistive loading w/100pF capacitance (plus cables used from phono)... not easily modifiable without abnormal cables or some DIY.
Be careful with MC... some expect a heavier arm (re compliance/weight/resonance combination).
Maybe turn down the treble knob?

At ~$250 (perhaps less?), I'd be tempted to try the Audio Technica VM540ML (happen to like the micro ridge or "micro line" stylus).

[SEAWOLF97]

And then you have this 1962 MC cartridge that was an analog finalist in the 2017
Stereophile awards.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/stereophiles-products-2017-joint-analog-components-year

https://www.stereophile.com/content/denon-dl-103-phono-cartridge

Denon DL-103 phono cartridge ($379; reviewed by J. Gordon Holt, Art Dudley, Stephen Mejias, Ken Micallef, September 1975, October & December 2007, April 2010, June & August 2017, Vol.3 No.9, Vol.30 Nos. 10 & 12, Vol.40 Nos. 6 & 8 review)
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/stereophiles-products-2017-joint-analog-components-year#1Etb78EUmT1JzPhK.99

available on eBay (from Spain) , last price I saw was abt $150