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TAS has their editors choice awards in the October issue.
In the under $500 category for phono cartridges are the Grado Gold and the Sumiko BPS EVO111.
I'm not familiar with the Sumiko , but I owned a Grado Silver for several years.
The Grado has many great qualities,including strong,punchy bass,and a beautiful,textured midrange.It also has some inner groove distortion , and I never could completely tame the silibance.
The VA is loaded with positive comments about the AT-OC9/ML11(which I now own) and the Denon 103.These would both qualify for the under $500 category,but I haven't seen any mention of them.
Just an observation.
Enjoy,
mark
Follow Ups:
...that up until recently, the Denon 103 has not been officially available in the US?Under such circumstances, I could see why they would not review it.
I did not realise that.
enjoy,
mark
Several comments:1) TAS does not include every decent cartridge in every price range.
2) Just because a product is widely discussed and recommended on VA doesn't necessarily mean much in the real world, i.e., out there where people occasionally crawl away from their computers and associate face-to-face with other human beings.
3) Denon cartridges are as old as the hills and used to be widely available in the United States.
These are both respected names in audio,and have been for a long time.
I did mention that this was the "under $500" range.
What I was getting at was that my experience with the Grado and the AT would lead me to choose the AT for honors.The comments on this forum tend to support that.
As far as face time with retailers,those of us who live in rural communities don't have that luxury on a regular basis.the internet has been a big help ingathering information and procuring components.In fact,I probably would never have even heard about the OC9 if it had not been for this forum.
enjou,
mark
I haven't heard an OC 9 for a long time, but in my (possibly outdated) view it is significantly superior to the Denon, which, while quite decent, is hugely overrated by many on this forum. There are lots of fine cartridges in the same price range, many of which do not require the use of step-ups, which can often cause hum problems.The Grados are interesting. I recently had a problem with my van den Hul MC-2 and installed a cheap-and old-Grado from my daughter's TT on my Scheu/Moerch combination while I sent it for repairs. The Grado sounds amazingly good, but in a lesser setup it was just OK. Grados are not in great favor here, but they make fine cartridges.
By the way my comments about getting away from the computer and seeing people face-to-face were not limited to visiting audio retailers. I was talking much more generally than that.
an online forum is saying. They are going to form their own opinions based on their own agenda. Subjective reality is inconsequential.
Hang in there...a new audio review website is coming on line soon that is made UP of veteran people from here, Agon, Headfi etc. Stay tuned
Just how will this represent an improvement over the existing audiophile media?
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