I don’t like either very much, but I generally recommend a good moving magnet cartridge over a cheap moving coil.

If you have say around $500 AUD to spend, and assuming you are chasing a medium compliance cartridge for a typical medium mass tonearm, there are lots of choices. Moving coil cartridges are technically better for a number of reasons, but at this low price point (yes, $500 is low for cartridges), moving coils are almost always high output types, of basic construction and generally don’t sound great. An exception is the venerable Denon DL-103, but it’s not suited to lower-mass arms.

Cheap cartridges with aluminium cantilevers and spherical or elliptical styli don’t sound amazing, whatever the flavour. A nice moving magnet at this price probably has a better diamond, and cantilever and is going to sound warmer, punchier and probably a little easier on the ear, even if it lacks the resolution MC carts provide. There are no surprises here.

The MC Advantage

Much beyond $500, moving magnet cartridges don’t get a lot better because they are technically limited by the mass or inertia of the moving elements. Low-output moving coils start to come into their own at around the $750 mark. From here, the advantages of moving coils become critically important and this is why most cartridges I recommend from $750 are MC type.

The equally legendary but better Audio Technica AT-OC9, in affordable XEN configuration is available at this price point and crushes most similarly priced MM carts. The catch? You need a really good phono preamp to take advantage of the low output and higher resolution offered by MC carts. Your Cambridge Audio 640P and iFi Zen are not going to cut it.

Almost all high-end cartridges are coils. All of my serious carts are or have been moving coils. Listen to any good system and you’ll hear it, but it creates that age-old equipment problem of wanting to spend more and more money! Do not forget or think you can sidestep needing an altogether better playback chain to get the most out of a low-output MC cart.

No Cheap Solutions

A classic rookie error involves listening to a good low-output MC cart on a phono preamp that isn’t good enough to extract the best out of these designs, and then deciding that there is no real difference. You’ll never hear what a good low-output MC cart can do because of the limited resolution of the phono preamp. The best solution is a better preamp and/or high-quality step-up transformer or premium active gain stage like the Accuphase AD-290, in my Accuphase C-290 preamp.