How to Choose a Cartridge

Reviewed September 2026.

You have a turntable you like and the next thing you want to change is the cartridge. That is the right instinct. What goes wrong is the step straight after, which is to open the maker's range, find the model three above the one fitted, and buy that one. A cartridge is half of a mechanical system with the tonearm and half of an electrical system with the phono stage, and both of those were settled before you started shopping. Buy past what either can handle and the expensive cartridge sounds worse than the cheap one it replaced. So the order here is gain, loading, arithmetic, then sound.

What each type asks of you

A moving magnet asks for a standard phono input and nothing else, and its stylus is a part you change yourself in two minutes without touching the alignment. In exchange the moving parts on the end of the cantilever are heavier, which caps how fast the tip follows the groove. A moving coil asks for a stage built for its output and an exchange rather than a stylus swap when it wears, and gives back lower moving mass. The answer people forget sits between them: a high output moving coil, around 2 to 2.8 mV, runs into an ordinary moving magnet input. There is a third arrangement that almost nobody explains, which is moving iron: the magnet and the coils both stay put, and a small piece of iron on the cantilever moves between them. That buys a light tip like a moving coil with the healthy output and the user replaceable stylus of a moving magnet, and a phono stage cannot tell it apart from one. Grado build nearly their whole range this way.

The tip shape is a separate choice from the generator and it decides more than the next price step does. A conical tip touches a small patch of each groove wall, forgives an arm that is slightly out, and leaves the finest modulation behind because it cannot reach into it. Elliptical, then line contact, Shibata and microline are progressively narrower front to back and taller up and down, so they sit deeper, read more of what was cut, and spread the tracking force over more wall, which is why a good line contact sounds more detailed and wears records less at the same time. The bill comes due in setup, because the narrow contact patch that reads the groove is the same one that punishes a stylus sitting a degree off.

Type	Output	Gain it asks for	When the stylus wears
Moving magnet	about 5 mV	about 40 dB, which is nearly every phono input	You change it yourself in two minutes
High output moving coil	2 to 2.8 mV	The same 40 dB input still works	An exchange, not a stylus swap
Low output moving coil	0.3 mV	about 64 dB, which is a different circuit rather than a knob	An exchange, not a stylus swap
Moving iron	about 5 mV	A standard input. The stage cannot tell it from a moving magnet	You change it yourself

Gain, which decides whether it works at all

The cartridge makes a voltage and the phono stage multiplies it up to line level, near 300 to 500 mV. A 5 mV moving magnet wants about 40 dB, a factor of a hundred, and 40 dB is what nearly every phono input provides. A 2.5 mV high output moving coil is one step down and that same input still works. A 0.3 mV low output moving coil wants about 64 dB, and that is a different circuit rather than a knob.

Run a 0.3 mV cartridge into a 40 dB input and you do not get silence, which is what makes the mistake expensive. You get music: thin, quiet, volume at three quarters, hiss arriving alongside the strings. People hear that and conclude the cartridge is a dud. It is fine, and it is being asked to do something no cartridge can do. What a Phono Preamp Actually Does covers the rest of that circuit, and the stage is often the cheaper half of the fix.

Loading, which decides how it sounds

Gain is what the stage gives the cartridge. Loading is what it presents back, and it is the specification people skip and then spend money on. A moving magnet is a coil of wire, and a coil looking into the capacitance of the tonearm cable and the input together makes a resonant circuit near the top of the audio band. Keep the total inside the maker's window and the response runs flat to the end of it. Go well past it and you get a lift somewhere around 10 to 15 kHz with a steeper fall after. Ortofon ask for 150 to 300 pF across the 2M range, everything included, and a tonearm cable alone can account for 100 to 150 pF of that. The number you are adding up is cable plus input, and the input's figure is in the manual rather than on the box.

This is the mistake that gets blamed on the cartridge. A 2M Blue into an input sitting near 400 pF is past the top of Ortofon's window. If the stage has switchable capacitance, start at the bottom of the window, because the cable has already spent part of it.

A moving coil has a fraction of the inductance, so capacitance stops mattering and resistance takes over. The working rule is a load of ten to twenty times the cartridge's internal impedance, which is why a Denon DL-103 at 40 ohms wants something in the low hundreds of ohms rather than the 100 ohm position most stages sit in by default. Too low and the top end is damped and the life goes out of it, too high and it can turn edgy. None of this stops the cartridge working, unlike gain, so set it once against a record you know well and then leave it alone. And a high output moving coil into a moving magnet input sidesteps the whole question: it sees the standard 47k, the capacitance barely matters, and there is nothing to set.

Compliance against arm mass, which is one multiplication

The suspension is a spring and the arm is a mass, so the pair has a resonant frequency, and you want it between 8 and 12 Hz: above warps and rumble at 3 to 5, below the lowest thing on the record at 20. Add the arm's effective mass, the cartridge's weight and half a gram for screws, and multiply by the dynamic compliance. Between roughly 175 and 400 puts you in the window. The trap is the compliance figure itself, because European makers quote it at 10 Hz and Japanese makers usually at 100 Hz, where the same cartridge reads about half as much.

Worked, so it is not abstract. A Rega RB330 is about 11 g effective mass, and an Ortofon 2M Blue is 7.2 g at a compliance of 20: the product is 374, which lands the resonance at 8.2 Hz, inside the window and near the bottom of it. Put a Denon DL-103 on that arm and it is 8.5 g at about 9 once its 100 Hz figure is converted: the product is 180, or 11.9 Hz, inside the window and near the top of it. Both sit a couple of tenths from an edge, and the edges fail differently. Low puts the resonance nearer the warp and rumble energy that excites it, which you hear as a woofer flapping on a dished record. High puts it under the bottom octave of the music, where output falls away below it, and the failure there is the resonance climbing into the music if the arm goes any lighter.

Pick	Type	What it needs	Its fault
Audio-Technica AT-VM95ML, $169	Moving magnet, microline tip	A standard input	A microline is unforgiving of an arm slightly out
Ortofon 2M Blue, $265	Moving magnet	150 to 300 pF, everything included	Lively rather than even, and tall enough that some arms need the height reset
Denon DL-103, about $300	Low output moving coil, 0.3 mV, 40 ohms, conical tip	64 dB and a load in the low hundreds of ohms	Low compliance, so it is wrong on a light modern arm
Hana SH, $750	Moving coil, about 2 mV, Shibata tip	An ordinary 40 dB input	A worn stylus means sending it away for an exchange
Grado Prestige Green4, $140, Gold4, $260	Moving iron, 4 mV	A standard input	Lightly shielded, so a direct drive motor close under the platter can put a hum in it

The one I hand most people: Audio-Technica AT-VM95ML, $169

A microline tip on a body that costs $69 with the plain elliptical in it, and every stylus in the range fits every body, so you can start at the bottom and change your mind later without redoing the alignment. Sibilants and cymbals at the end of a side stay clean where the elliptical in the same body has started to smear them. That is the whole of the hundred dollars. The fault is the flip side of the tip: a microline is unforgiving of an arm slightly out, so it rewards the evening with the protractor and punishes skipping it.

If the deck came with something basic: Ortofon 2M Blue, $265

The default on a modern medium mass arm, for the compliance reason above rather than anything mystical, and the Red at $125 is the same body and takes the Blue stylus later. It is lively rather than even, with the presence region carrying more weight than the rest of the band. That flatters a soft system and is the wrong direction on one that is already bright. Two faults: that forwardness is a characteristic rather than a setting, so check the loading above before you decide it is too much, and the body is tall enough that some arms need the height reset to put the tracking angle back.

If the arm is heavy and old: Denon DL-103, about $300

A 1962 broadcast cartridge still in production, still 0.3 mV, still 40 ohms, still low compliance. On a heavy arm it does the midrange and lets the top end alone. The conical tip retrieves less than a $150 line contact does, which is the trade people buy it for. The faults are not small: it needs 64 dB and a load in the low hundreds of ohms, and the low compliance makes it wrong on a light modern arm, which is where the disappointed owners are.

Moving coil without a new phono stage: Hana SH, $750

About 2 mV out of a moving coil, so an ordinary 40 dB input handles it, with a Shibata tip and a compliance that suits normal arms. The tip is the reason to want it: a Shibata holds the end of a side together where a lesser profile starts working hard. This is the way into a moving coil that does not require replacing the electronics the same afternoon. The fault is structural rather than sonic: a worn stylus means sending it away for an exchange, so price that before you buy.

If the deck is direct drive, check the motor before you order

Grado cartridges are moving iron, which the phono stage reads like a moving magnet: 4 mV, standard input, and on the Prestige models a stylus you replace yourself. The Prestige Green4 is $140 and the Gold4 is $260, and they are voiced the way Grado voice things, which is forward rather than even. The fault is worth knowing before you order. The generator is lightly shielded, so on a deck whose motor sits close under the platter, which takes in a lot of direct drive designs, a Grado can pick up a hum that grounding will not fix. On a belt drive it is a non issue.

What a worn stylus does, and how to tell

Makers quote 400 to 1,000 hours depending on tip shape, and the conservative move is to believe the bottom of the range. A side runs about twenty minutes, so a thousand hours is three thousand sides, and an hour a day gets you there inside three years. It does not fade politely either. The contact faces wear flats, and a flat has edges, so what was a polished curve riding the groove wall turns into a chisel carrying a couple of grams. What that removes does not grow back, and it lands on the album you play most, because that is the one that wore the stylus out.

How to tell, cheapest first. Listen at the end of a side, because inner grooves are where mistracking shows first, and sibilance starting to spit on a record that used to be clean is the earliest honest sign. Then look, because a USB microscope is forty dollars and at 200x a worn tip is a dull grey flat where there should be a bright edge. Then count hours in a note on your phone, since gradual is the one thing ears cannot catch. Clean records buy stylus life too, which is the least romantic argument in How to Clean Records Without the Ritual and probably the strongest. It is also why a used record needs describing by somebody who has played it. A record carries every stylus that has ever been on it, and groove wear is the defect a visual grade misses.

Tracking force and alignment

Four things have to be right.

• Tracking force, set with a digital gauge at record height, to the middle of the maker's window rather than the light end. Too light is the damaging error: a mistracking cartridge bounces in the groove, and that does more harm in an afternoon than a tenth of a gram does in a year.
• Anti-skate, which starts around the tracking force number and gets trimmed from there.
• Overhang and zenith, set with a two point protractor. This is what decides whether a line contact stylus is an upgrade or an expensive mistake.
• Vertical tracking angle, which is arm height, and matters little with a conical tip and a great deal with a line contact.

None of it is difficult and all of it is fiddly, which is exactly why it gets skipped. A gauge and a two point protractor cost less than the step between two cartridges, and they are what make either of them work.

The Short Version

If your phono stage is 40 dB, buy a moving magnet or a high output moving coil and ignore everything written about low output cartridges. Run the multiplication before you order, and find out what the input loads it with before you blame a cartridge for a bright top end. Then buy on sound: at $169 the AT-VM95ML is the one I hand most people, at $265 the 2M Blue is the answer on a modern medium mass arm, and if the arm is heavy the DL-103 at about $300 is still a good one provided the stage has 64 dB in it. And if the last stylus change was more than three years ago, do not buy a better cartridge at all. Buy a stylus, and put the difference into a gauge and a protractor. That is the upgrade, and it is the one that stops costing you records.

---

Come and hear it

All of the above exists to get you to the part that is a matter of taste, which is what the thing sounds like on your records. An hour with two cartridges on one deck settles that, and How I Listen is the method I use in that hour. The listening room is at Free River Studios, 215 E. Lewis St #301 in Livingston, third floor, by appointment. It is free. Bring the deck if it travels, bring the record you know best.