I can’t really agree with that, personally the 2M Black is far too aggressive for me. I like the 2M Bronce and Quintet Bronce much better without the shibata cut.
I don´t buy any new 180g vinyl either. It’s poorly mixed and just sounds better digitally. Like you said it´s all horrible. When I expand my collection it’s with used albums in excellent condition or a few exceptions from the following labels: Opus 3, MoFi, audioquest, some ECM stuff, some polydor
You are clearly right, without a much better tonearm the G1042 makes little sense.
I suppose you want high mass design again, which makes it a bit more expensive.
The AVID Ingenium PNP has great potential and can be bought without a tonearm. Alternatively a used Technics 1200SL mk4 or mk5 could fit you.
Not all expensive cartidges don’t like bad records and it depends on the cut of the diamond and how well the toneam can handle wavy records without making the cartidge track badly. Dynamic tracking force often helps a lot with wavy records.
Isn’t that what we all want?
The preamp is more than adequate and I would put the money into the turntable. Even with $400 MMs, you’re still in good shape.
The Grado is good at masking the low resolution with warmth and low clarity. Many people like ortofon for clear presentation and with a decent preamp like the magni (Output Impedance: 75 ohms) they rarely get too bright. Many cheap preamplifiers have an input capacitance of 200pF or even higher, you have to add the capacitance of the cable, a cheap cable can reach 180pF or more and you have exceeded (200pF+180pF) the maximum input capacitance of 300pF for a 2M blue, making it sound awfully bright.
Of course they are brighter than Grado or Goldring and therefore more exhausting on bad recordings. In general you can say that a pickup with a higher resolution and less distortion can allow itself to sound brighter without getting harsh. Ortofons only have bass problems on bad record players.
Do not confuse the tracking force with the tracking abilit - possible resolution. I criticized the grado for poor tracking resulting in distortion, especially in the inner grooves, which means that it does not slide along the grooves but jumps back and forth inside it.
Tracking force becomes a serious point of criticism only above 3g. But has nothing to do with the weight of the cartridge itself.
Not every cartidge works with every tonearm mass, that’s true, read this.
I would just keep the uturn orbit and maybe upgrade to a Rega Planar 3 at some point. The P3 is in my opinion one of the turntables with the best price performance at the market. There are a lot of people for whom a P3 is enough, because it offers almost everything a good player needs.
I would suggest the Prestige Blue2 on the Orbit, as price performance is much better than the Red, but don’t expect a massive improvement.
The Blue would also work well on a P3 and if more resulution is needed upgrade to a Goldring 2100 or better.
I also don’t think the a Goldring 2100 iwould be completely out of place on the uturn orbit, especially when a Planar 3 is in sight.
THX
I often advise beginners to use vinyl only for very old recordings that are difficult to get digitally in good quality. Therefore you don’t need an expensive player but one that makes bad recordings sound good.
Get a nice frontend and a decent DAC, because I suspect that’s the primary way you’ll be listening. There are a many nice people with a lot of experience in this kind of segment here in this forum to be found under the corresponding topics. My knowledge is limited to mid-range speakers, traditional amplifiers and record players. I can only advise you to get advice for all things together (DAC, amp, headphones) and not to mix different phylosophies because this is where things often go wrong.
Thanks. Yeah, they look really cool.
