Are there any audiophile cartridges that come pre-mounted or has it's headshell?

[AFK]

I see that Ortofon cartridges don't require any mounting, but I'm guessing they are more for DJ use than for audiophile use. Why don't they make an Ortofon like cartridge but for audiophile use? Why the need for mounting?

[labrat]

Different arms have different ways of mounting the cartridges, so not such a good idea to make a limited number item only fitting one brand (or maybe only a few) and not fitting all of them.
Ortofon (and other cartridge makers) have had high-end Moving Coil cartridges with fittings for installing without a head-shell, you just have to do a search here on the Internet.
But most of these were very high-priced also!
Edit:
Try searching using "SME", a lot of nice information there! Too bad many of those old cartridges was made in so small numbers.
I remember reading once, some Japanese producer had their MC-cartridges made in the Philippines, by deaf Philippina girls.
They were the only ones with small enough fingers and skills, and able to be concentrated enough over time to make the MC-cartridges, which was for the bigger part hand-manufactured.

[lini]

Originally Posted by AFK

Why don't they make an Ortofon like cartridge but for audiophile use? Why the need for mounting?

Well, KAB offers an audiophile version of the Stanton Groovemaster II. And, of course, there were the Concorde 20 & 30, which would also take Ortofon's needle 40. I'm not sure whether recent Concorde versions like the Broadcast would also accept the needles 20, 30 & 40 - maybe they do, as they should all be compatible with needle 78...

In general, keeping headshells and cartridges seperate has the advantage that you can choose from differently heavy headshells for your cartridge of choice and thereby optimize the effective mass and thus the resonance frequency of your arm/headshell/cartridge combination.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini