Cheap Turntable, expensive Cartridge

[Lost Angeles]

At our evening meal discussion my son (who is not into HiFi) said I should buy the cheapest Turntable I can get and then put an expensive cartridge into it to get the best sound. My argument that it should be Turntable then Arm and then Cartridge did not convince him so he said I needed to post on here to prove I’m right.
So can someone in laymans terms back me up or shoot me down if I’m wrong.
He will believe the answer off the forum.
Thank you.

 

[gbhsi1]

You are right, he is wrong.

 

[Anonymous]

Lost Angeles:
At our evening meal discussion my son (who is not into HiFi) said I should buy the cheapest Turntable I can get and then put an expensive cartridge into it to get the best sound. My argument that it should be Turntable then Arm and then Cartridge did not convince him so he said I needed to post on here to prove I'm right.
So can someone in laymans terms back me up or shoot me down if I'm wrong.
He will believe the answer off the forum.
Thank you.

Oh dear, the ignorance of the young...................

 

[Lost Angeles]

Can someone explain why I am right so he can understand

 

[chebby]

It depends on what you mean by 'expensive' and 'cheapest'.

Yes the traditional 'heirarchy' works well as a guide when buying all new, assuming some kind of thought has been put into matching deck/arm/phono-stage/cartridge synergy. (Especially when considering high and low mass arms and high/low compliance cartridges.)

However your Rega P3 & 2M Red could easily bear a stylus upgrade to 2M Bronze - for just less than £200 - with no ill effect. It would sound better.

Yes, ideally you would have upgraded to a Rega P5 (or similar) first but that would cost £680 plus the cost of the better stylus. It would make more of your better cartridge but at a significantly higher cost.

The same argument probably applies to something like the Rega Exact (£200). Rega presumably optimise those combinations (P2/Bias, P3-24/Elys, P5 &P7/Exact, P9/Apheta) to keep things balanced.

However, 'overstepping' the recommended combinations with say - an Exact in your P3 is not going to bring the Flat-Earth Regional Re-Education Team (FERRET) crashing through your walls for breaking the rules like they used to in the old days! You WILL hear an improvement just not quite as much.

Like all such 'rules' there is wriggle room.

I am not advocating or suggesting that someone pops a Koetsu into their Project Debut but it will not bring the heavens down if they tried a £100 cartridge instead of the £25 supplied one.

 

[Lost Angeles]

My sons view was that if I put a £2500 cartridge in my deck or even a cheap TT that's advertised in a Sunday mag the sound would be better than spending £1700 on a deck, £540 on the arm and £270 on the cartridge.
My view was that the second option should sound better as a more expensive deck will have better speed control etc and less rumble (Does anyone still talk of rumble). Fortunately we didn't get around to discussing the technicality of arms.
The discussion started when I said that to upgrade my TT I could consider just buying a new deck and getting my arm fitted on it with a new cartridge. I was going to put a post on here as to how good a deck could my arm go on and how good a cartridge would it support, can the arm be re-vamped/ is it worth it, but my sons view you just need an expensive cartridge meant I started this thread instead.

 

[plastic penguin]

chebby:

It depends on what you mean by 'expensive' and 'cheapest'.

Yes the traditional 'heirarchy' works well as a guide when buying all new, assuming some kind of thought has been put into matching deck/arm/phono-stage/cartridge synergy. (Especially when considering high and low mass arms and high/low compliance cartridges.)

However your Rega P3 & 2M Red could easily bear a stylus upgrade to 2M Bronze - for just less than £200 - with no ill effect. It would sound better.

Yes, ideally you would have upgraded to a Rega P5 (or similar) first but that would cost £680 plus the cost of the better stylus. It would make more of your better cartridge but at a significantly higher cost.

The same argument probably applies to something like the Rega Exact (£200). Rega presumably optimise those combinations (P2/Bias, P3-24/Elys, P5 &P7/Exact, P9/Apheta) to keep things balanced.

However, 'overstepping' the recommended combinations with say - an Exact in your P3 is not going to bring the Flat-Earth Regional Re-Education Team (FERRET) crashing through your walls for breaking the rules like they used to in the old days! You WILL hear an improvement just not quite as much.

Like all such 'rules' there is wriggle room.

I am not advocating or suggesting that someone pops a Koetsu into their Project Debut but it will not bring the heavens down if they tried a £100 cartridge instead of the £25 supplied one.

Sorry to say, cheb.........you're absolutely right

. When I souped up my Pro-ject from the standard Ortofon cartridge, the dealer, bless him, tried a couple of options, £100 + Ortofon and Goldring. I finally settled on the Clearaudio (tad more expensive).

It is strange that the difference I heard was fairly substantial. Although, whether it is better or not than the other two, as always, is down to opinions. Alternatively, I could always blame my UCS......

 

[chebby]

Lost Angeles:My sons view was that if I put a £2500 cartridge in my deck or even a cheap TT that's advertised in a Sunday mag the sound would be better than spending £1700 on a deck, £540 on the arm and £270 on the cartridge.

The £2500 cartridge would still 'function' as a cartridge in the extremely unlikely setting of a sub £100 Sunday supplement turntable (assuming it had a 1/2" mount and the ability to set the necessary tracking force) but 'function' would be about all you would get. It might sound about £25 better than the stock cartridge.

On a £250 TT (like a Rega P2) the £2500 cartridge might sound £250 better than a £50 Rega Bias 2 and so on.. etc.

The full benefit of the £2500 cartridge will not kick in until everything else is right. There is a lot of engineering and physics and geometry that is going to have to be near perfect for the whole picture to develop. Even with expensive turntables/arms there would be no guarantees. (There are a lot of shiny, high-end TT's out there that are - sadly - mostly 'shine' rather than good audio engineering.)

A £1700 deck with a £270 arm and £540 cartridge is a credible scenario but certainly not the extremes your son is on about.

His suggestion would be like putting a Ferrari engine into a Morris Marina. It would get thrashed around a track by a Caterham 7 with the Morris Marina's old engine in it!