I've owned 2 of these beauties (1st one was the original & replaced with a MK 2
which was later crushed in the Northridge earthquake in '94). One used an
Alpheson arm (SM 1000 I think) with an Audioquest 404 cartridge and sounded way
too bright - could not get it to sound relaxed & "analogy" - second one I
bought used and it had a Linn Ikos arm with a Grado cartridge. The Ikos/Grado
sounded fabulous. I currently use a Linn LP-12 with an Ikos/Grado combo.
Sounds great.
One note: make shure you see it operate before forking over the cash - the
power supply and speed control were problematic.
Good luck!