The Virtuoso was the best of my carts at the time I had the Soundsmith work done. Since it came back sounding better than new I had no complaints. I wanted to dive into MC carts since then, and I now have a couple of those feeding into a SUT, still using a MM phono stage, but that has been upgraded as well. I really like the sound of MC --> SUT --> MM phono stage. It requires the extra phono cable as the only downside.