Ortofon 2M Bronze - Group E cartridges' ($350-$380) REVIEWS and Shoot-Out Series

Dearest Friends!!! Thank you for your kindness and patience. We have come now, to the Group E ($330-$380) cartridge shoot-out and reviews, consisting of the Grado Reference Platinum 2, Nagaoka MP-200 and the Ortofon 2M Bronze.
Errata: the tracking force is 1.5g, all listening done at 1.5g. The error of "2g" as typed on the video was a simple typo, copy-and-paste editing from the previous HanaEL video.
Referencing Equipment:
Hall:
- Technics SL1200GAE, Avid Sequel SP, Rega Planar 3,
- Phono cable: Zonotone NeoGrandio10Hi,
- Vitus RI-101 (new, arrived in 26th March 2018)
- B&W 804D, Shunyata Hydra Triton, and cabling.
Phonostages used:
- Schiit Mani (as shown)
- Croft RIAA RS from Glenn Croft, with 4xNOS Philips JAN ECG ECC83, 2xNOS - Mullard 85A2, and 1xNOS GE 12BH7A valves from WatfordValves (as shown)
Room:
- Technics SL1200G, Icon Audio PS1Mk2, Leben CS300XS with 2 x NOS Mullard 12AX7, and 2xNOS Harma Cryo-Treated Burst-Tested E84L from WatfordValves, AudioNote AN-K/LX.
- Technics SL1200Mk2, Mk5
Auditioning Tracks:
Clean Bandit - “A&E”
Stanley Turrentine - “I Want A Little Girl”
Art Blakey - “Noise In The Attic”, “Crisis”
Melody Gardot - “Baby I’m A Fool”, “If The Stars Were Mine”
Hank Mobley - “East of The Village”
Doug MacLeod - "Rosa Lee”, “Black Night”
Vanessa Fernandez - “Use Me”
Rebekah Del Rio - “Llorando”
Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring - Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra
***** Background :-)
Dearest Friends and Buddies,
I am Ian and I reside in sunny Singapore. I love our Vinyl Community and Vinyl Music. Vinyl analogue playback is utterly blissful, and I want for fellow friends and buddies to engage in vinyl music for many, many years in their life, each vinyl buddy through their school life, through the hustle and bustle of daily work, accompany them through precious hours at home with their family members or in their hostel with their friends. Vinyl music is blissful, free of time smear, phase shift, pre-ring and post-ring that plagues digital playback. Vinyl buddies and friends can all attest to that. It is not warm in the “bassy warm” sense, it is not soothing in the sense that “everything gets smoothed out”. It is because it is analogue, very detailed, calm, invigorating, enthralling, dynamic, refreshing. In a word, blissful. Utterly :-D
I want for all to get the very equipment that will get us there. These equipment, I firmly believe, are present, and existent, even at affordable price points!..and I started off in Dec 2015 hunting out for them, selling off my own Rega RP6 (which my wife and I loved) to fund the first batch of cartridges for review: the 5 cartridges in Group A ($70-$80), and the 7 cartridges in Group B ($90-$130). Subsequently I told myself to set aside $500-$1000 per month from my monthly salary to buy equipment to review. My own money. Quite a hefty sum monthly, significant to me, as I am a salaried man. I know this is crazy. But I believe in every field, there are people who have to make the sacrifice to pursue their love for the greater good, and to serve, the community of friends. I have also downsized my car in mid-2017 so as to commit these monies to fund these projects. I totally, rigorously, and kindly reject all forms of donations, be they from friends, from retailers, from manufacturers. This is a hobby, and my teachers and advisors in life have advised me that to bring balance to life, and to be wholesome, one will engage in a livelihood (daily job or business) that earns the monies, and one will also simultaneously engage in a hobby/service in life that is non-competitive, non-monetarily-remunerative. My wife totally understands what I want to do for the community and she so kindly supports my decision and efforts. Vinyl music is a lovely hobby I hold dearly. Friends and buddies are my ultimate responsibility and my love. I want the very best for them, and to provide totally honest reviews. Moles exist in hifi forums, moles also exist from benefactors who donate. I do not want to remotely encounter any moles masquerading as benefactors donating to my cause, only to find out sooner or later that such donations were/are from certain manufacturers or retailers. Everybody will do things differently. I want to maintain my status as a common-folk, aspire always to adopt the Shokunin spirit: of spending the utmost diligent care, through unhurried work, never caring for returns, in perfecting their work for the community. The personal satisfaction of getting to the very best equipment in each price class to help all my lovely buddies and friends is, the only thing, in store for me :-D We toast to the joy and bliss of vinyl analogue music. Vinyl Music deserves our love and attention. Our listening. Our care.
We toast to the lively spirit of:
“Everybody will be dancing and doing it right!" - Daft Punk
Let's go, buddies and friends!!!
Warmest Regards,
~ ian :-D