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Upgrading your turntable's cartridge can be a hugely effective way of improving your record player. We recommend six to help you spin up your sound

Vinyl is a format we love, and it's capable of a terrific sound if played on a great record player. And ‘great’ will depend on a number of factors, including the quality of one crucial component we are focusing on here – the turntable’s cartridge. This holds the cantilever, the diamond tip of which sits in the groove and reads its tiny bumps, while the cartridge’s job is to turn this mechanical movement into an electrical signal.

Things to look out for when choosing a cartridge include the materials from which it is made, how well it tracks, its method of mounting and how easy it is to fit. And, last but not least, the type of generator that creates the electrical signal – of which moving-magnet (MM) and moving-coil (MC) are the two most common types.

An MM cartridge’s cantilever is attached directly to the magnet. The movement of the cantilever, caused by the bumps in the record groove, causes the magnet to move so inducing a proportional current in the nearby coils. This current is then fed through the connecting wires of the tonearm into the partnering phono stage.

Conversely, in a moving-coil design, it’s the magnet that is fixed in position and the coil that is mounted on the cantilever and moves. MC models tend to be more expensive and, since they are lower output, need a phono stage with more gain.

For the novice turntable tinkerer, this can seem daunting. But make no mistake, your choice of cartridge will make a big difference to your record playback. So whether you are buying high-end hi-fi that requires a considered choice of cartridge, or you simply want to improve the sound of your current deck, we run down a handful of our favourite models for different budgets, including both MM and MC options. Higher quality audio could be just a step away…