Ortofon MC Anna would be my desert island cartridge; mounted on the Durand Telos Sapphire tonearm and Wave Kinetics tt sitting on a Herzan TS-140 active isolation shelf. the Anna would play thru the newly designed phono section of 'new' darTZeel NHB-18NS battery powered dart preamp.
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vaslt&1036349020&openmine&zzMikelavigne&4&5
i love the Anna for it's combination of naturalness, transparency, lack of distortion, ease, microdynamic livelyness, complex tonal shading, neutrality yet brings plenty of body and substance, bass articulation, bloom, and overall musical flow. it's an ultimate transducer which escapes that sense of being part of the reproduction chain and ventures into the realm of reality.
i've evolved into a mostly classical music listener; the Anna is superb with solo piano, solo volin, any sort of string quartet or chamber music and is able to render full on orchestral works with ease. i'm also a huge jazz fan and love the way the Anna does any horn or drum kit. it will also boggie with the best of them whether ZZ Top, or LZ, or anything you want to throw at it.
to my ears solo classical piano is the most demanding for any vinyl front end as there is no place to hide. it's more the whole chain of pieces that must be right for the piano to be fully there. the Anna does it's part to nail it.
