I got a private message from a member asking "How is the bass with this cart?" I was going to respond via PM but thought it might make for good general discussion.
Well, this is kind of a loaded (pun intended) question. Lots of people complain that the cart is "brittle" or "shrill" but I've never found that to be the case. However, from what I've heard on my (and other) systems, how the cart is loaded is of utmost importance. It sounds (IMHO) really great through the pre on my Marantz 2230. So much so that I have tried external phono pres and found either no improvement or in at least one case an obvious degradation of the sound.
The other thing about this cart is that it is best on tables with more substantial "S" shaped or other tubular arms and especially with adjustable VTA. The bass is profoundly affected by the VTA. On my JVC QL-A7, I have the arm at the pivot point adjusted as high as it will go. Lower it down and the sound really thins out.
But you know that opinions are hard to judge by, so I uploaded a small sampler of recordings of records that I have done so you can hear for yourself how this cart sounds in my system. No EQ was used on any of these tracks.
The system...
JVC QL-A7 direct drive turntable (with mods).
Audio-Technica AT440MLa Cartridge.
Marantz Model 2230 Receiver (Phono Pre).
Vinyl meticulously hand cleaned.
E-Mu 1212m soundcard capturing at 32 bit float, 192 khz.
Lightly polished with ClickRepair (unless completely manually declicked - see description)
Stray pops missed by CR manually removed with Audition single click tool (never batch processed).
You will need WinRAR or similar to unpack the download and you need a player that handles FLAC (may I recommend Foobar) to play these lossless, Redbook quality files. Oh, and Rapidshare is a bit of a bother for free users, but hopefully you will find the files worth the minute or so of inconvenience. Come back and tell me what YOU think of the bass on this cart.
https://rapidshare.com/files/553993773/How does that cart sound.rar