I guess it could be said that as a MC cart, when taken reductio ad absurdum, is nothing more complicated than two small coils of wire being waggled in front of a magnet by a cantilever bearing a stylus at the far end.... As such, the innards of a £200 and £2000 example are virtually identical. I'm going to make a wild observation that there should be no reason that MC cart of "as good as it gets" quality could not be offered for sale at say £250... and that maybe cheaper, less competent examples are deliberately held back in their performance in order to give an upgrade path of increasing profitability for the manufacturers...
Look at the precision micro engineering involved in a laser pick up for a CD player or, identically, a £15 DVD drive and tell me that it is in any way less intricate or less difficult to manufacture than even a £2k MC cart... The difference being that probably 80% of the worlds population wants a DVD drive in their PC or DVD player for the telly and so the profit comes from the universal demand... The high end MC cart is easier to make but only maybe 1 in 100,000 people want one...
It would not surprise me if for big companies like Ortofon or Audio Technica if costs only say £10 to make a £200 cart and £20 to make a £2000 cart... and that the prices are entirely due to it being such a small market for such a niche product... I'll get my coat
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Modded Thorens TD150, Audio Technica AT-1005 MkII, Technics EPC-300MC, Arkless Hybrid MC phono stage, Arkless passive pre, Arkless 50WPC Class A SS power amp, (or) Arkless modded Leak Stereo 20, Modded Kef Reference 105/3's
ReVox PR99, Studer B62, Ferrograph Series 7, Tandberg TCD440, Hitachi FT-5500MkI, also FT-5500MkII
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