Recommendation for a cheap cart that's good on 50's/60's equip

[Electronic M]

The 1/2" bracket is a must....At least till I have one, then I might be able to fabricate copies and buy the cheap ones to mount in them.

It looks like diamond or sapphire needles are available. I've heard that saphire is supposed to be better at not skipping on worn records (the primary app for older players in my collection that track heavy) so low skip vs longer life seems like a reasonable trade off to me.

[maxhifi]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

The 1/2" bracket is a must....At least till I have one, then I might be able to fabricate copies and buy the cheap ones to mount in them.

It looks like diamond or sapphire needles are available. I've heard that saphire is supposed to be better at not skipping on worn records (the primary app for older players in my collection that track heavy) so low skip vs longer life seems like a reasonable trade off to me.

Saphire is junk, if isn't soft enough to be kinder to records, just enough to wear down fast and start damaging them. And the price difference is insignificant in the scheme of things.

The one you want to avoid is the cheap veraion with a plastic cantaliever, it doesn't sound good like the metal one does. I use my heavy tracking players with worn old records too, with good results.

Also notice there's two half inch mounts on the VM site, for shallow or deep headshells.

You can also glue the naked cartridge in place of an old flat metal crystal cartridge, this worked well in my slot load RCA 45 player.

One of these days I want to try this cartridge in a proper hi-fi turntable, just for fun, to see how good it can sound under the best possible conditions