I have been using my Music Hall MMF-5 since early August - almost 3 months. But recently, I got fed up with its extremely low-riding Goldring cartridge: I had to raise the VTA very high (the pivot end noticeably higher than the cartridge end) just to avoid the rear bottom of the cartridge body hitting the vinyl - and then, the sound quality suffered greatly: It mistracked, skipped at times, and picked up a lot of deep-down crap from the grooves, not to mention that it sounded brighter than it should have been. If I had continued to operate this TT/cartridge combo any further, my precious vinyl would have been trashed sooner than expected.
I confirmed that it's the G1012GX cartridge that's at fault here - after I mounted a Grado Prestige ME+ mono cartridge (yep, that's the more expensive of the two mono cartridges in the Grado Prestige line) on the MMF-5's tonearm. This Grado cartridge came nowhere close to bottoming out, even with the pivot end set lower than the cartridge end. That was a week ago. But I couldn't use the MMF-5 at all, until today. That's because I broke the string for the anti-skating weight, and I couldn't use the TT at all without anti-skating. (A replacement anti-skating weight costs $5.) Now I'm playing my mono LPs on that MMF-5 (stereo LPs would be reproduced with mono sound, had I played them on my current setup). The ME+ actually got through the skips that the G1012GX had trouble with! (Put it this way, the ME+ got through without skipping the portions that the 1012GX had trouble with.)
Now that I'm stuck with mono playback for the time being, and I don't have any standard-mount stereo cartridges in my collection better than a Grado Prestige Red (which would have been a step down from the G1012GX in overall performance), my next cartridge purchase will be either a Grado Prestige Gold or a Grado Reference Platinum. I may even buy another AT440ML (I bought one, then returned it unopened, thinking that I wouldn't need it).
Anyway, I first had a Technics SL5 (later upgraded with A-T t4p type cartridge), then a Thorens TD160Super with Grace 707 arm and Yamaha MC-505(?) cartridge (parted from it, because cd convenience won...), still got my Thorens TD280MkII (as cheaper replacement for occasional use - plus a new AT120E to replace the harsh cheapo Stanton...) and my stepfather's old Braun PS-550... I'm still curious about modern vinyl equipment, though. For example, I'd like to know how modern Duals like the CS455 and CS505-4 fare - as well as the new Clearaudio Emotion and the recently upgraded Technics SL1210 in version M5GE...
