I've been using a pre owned Ortofon MC20 Supreme, its a nice cartridge, but the suspension is starting to sag, so I have to start think about what I will replace it with. I'm looking for a LOMC, but I don't want to have to sell a kidney, so under £500, which in MC terms is not very high up the ladder I know.
I had a Denon DL-301 II which I liked a lot, punchy vibrant sound, especially liked the way it handled surface noise on my mainly pre owned vinyl. The cantilever fell out and that was the end of that.

When considering a cartridge the Phono stage is part of the equation, probably more so than the turntable, if not the arm, so I've been thinking along those lines.

The evergreen DL-103/103R with a valve MM Phono/SUT have been mewed over and would be a popular choice.

I started to read good things on hear and elsewhere about the AT33PTG/II:



I'm not knowledgeable on the AT range, so made a few enquiries and a very good fellow of this parish offered to loan me his, that's it pictured on my linear tracking arm. I was going to try it with my Pro-Ject Phono Box RS using the balanced inputs and with my newly completed tracking PSU. However an alternative came up which I couldn't ignore, in the form of a pre owned Aqvox Phono 2CI mkII:



Designed originally for studio use on CD to Vinyl mastering and in direct to vinyl recording it is very transparent and detailed. This would be an ideal unit to try out the AT33.

Well I have to say, I agree with the positive comments on the AT33. It has a nice balanced sound across the whole frequency range. Not too bright or brittle as some AT's have a reputation for, nice rich mids and plenty of punch and depth at the bottom end. For its price, there is a lot of detail retrieval, I like this one and it's good at ignoring all but the worst surface noise as well.

This is currently top of my want list.

I've been listening using solid silver wire between cartridge/phono stage, but I want to try it with copper, which I tend to prefer for the mids in most cases. I will be making some balanced leads using Sommer SC-Goblin, screened copper twisted pair (under £2.00/m) it's flexible, only 4.6mm dia and fairly low capacitance, so should be fit for purpose.

I'll see how that fares.