You've had some good input here and I hope my additional comments and experiences will be value-added for you.
First, almost all new cartridges take quite a while to break in, often 50-100 hours or more, and they can sound quite bright and strident until they do. Part of the reason for this, acc. to what Peter Ledermann of Soundsmith told me (arguably one of the most knowledgeable persons in the U.S. about the engineering aspects of cartridges) is that many cartridges, particularly mass-produced ones, are not properly or optimally aligned internally (where you can't see the alignment of components e.g. the armature, suspension, etc.) and the process of playing and running them in for this time is required them to kind of "twist" themselves into something resembling proper alignment. Your cartridge, while a good one and a fine value for the money, is not what would be considered a high-end cartridge with respect to it's engineering specification, it's more of a budget or entry-level cartridge. Let's be honest, we're not talking a $13,000 Koetsu Tiger Eye here or even a hand-assembled $600 Grado Reference Sonata. With cartridges, just like fine camera lenses, you get what you pay for. There is no way to engineer superior lens optical performance or high-end stereo cartridge performance inexpensively. The work is just too demanding and difficult, from an engineering perspective. As a result, these less expensive cartridges cannot be sold at a price point where the manufacturer can afford to extremely precisely hand-assemble and fine-tune the alignment of the cartridge internals into perfect and absolutely precise orientation. This is why many "deluxe" or "0.1%" cartridges are quite a bit more expensive than a standard issue cartridge, the cost and effort to get these carts perfect with respect to their ideal specs is costly and time-consuming, and this is why many cartridges need extensive running in before they start to sound good.
So, before passing final judgement, you will need to let your cart run-in a good while before getting a final assessment. Also, if I recall correctly, no one mentioned checking your vertical tracking angle or stylus rake angle of your cartridge. If you can adjust the VTA of your tonearm, you should look into fine-tuning that.
Additionally, it could also be that your stylus from your old cartridge is not as good as the stylus on the A-T with respect to resolving musical detail. This could be due to the fact that the stylus is worn, or the design of the new A-T stylus is superior at resolving detail. Any cart mfr will tell you that it all comes down to the stylus, it's design, mass, tip configuration, orientation, etc. with respect to the cartridge performance. The carts in many mfr lines are identical except for the stylus. For example, the Grado Prestige 1 Black, Green, Blue, Red, Silver, and Gold carts: they are all the same cartridge except that they have better styli and tighter tolerances as you go up the model line from Black to Gold.
Lastly, if you're hearing a lot of surface noise, unless they are physically damaged (as they could be from a worn or damaged stylus or mishandling) your records are dirty, and to remove this noise you have to get them thoroughly clean. While there is very good thread here about cleaning records manually (one that I've contributed my own experiences to), in my experience, no manual method holds a candle to using a record cleaning machine to vacuum out all the groove dirt, soils, oils, and other contaminants. In my own extensive experimentation, the process of vacuuming the cr*p out of the grooves as soon as it's been released by the cleaning surfactant is a critical functional response, and a record that has had a deep cleaning using surfactants, enzymes, and pure water followed at each step by a vacuuming produces markedly superior results to hand-cleaning and drying. I didn't used to think this was the case compared to manual cleaning, but the facts are..it is.
You will be amazed at the improvement this will make even in records that appear to be quite clean. It's as significant as replacing a major component in the amplification chain with a better one.
First, almost all new cartridges take quite a while to break in, often 50-100 hours or more, and they can sound quite bright and strident until they do. Part of the reason for this, acc. to what Peter Ledermann of Soundsmith told me (arguably one of the most knowledgeable persons in the U.S. about the engineering aspects of cartridges) is that many cartridges, particularly mass-produced ones, are not properly or optimally aligned internally (where you can't see the alignment of components e.g. the armature, suspension, etc.) and the process of playing and running them in for this time is required them to kind of "twist" themselves into something resembling proper alignment. Your cartridge, while a good one and a fine value for the money, is not what would be considered a high-end cartridge with respect to it's engineering specification, it's more of a budget or entry-level cartridge. Let's be honest, we're not talking a $13,000 Koetsu Tiger Eye here or even a hand-assembled $600 Grado Reference Sonata. With cartridges, just like fine camera lenses, you get what you pay for. There is no way to engineer superior lens optical performance or high-end stereo cartridge performance inexpensively. The work is just too demanding and difficult, from an engineering perspective. As a result, these less expensive cartridges cannot be sold at a price point where the manufacturer can afford to extremely precisely hand-assemble and fine-tune the alignment of the cartridge internals into perfect and absolutely precise orientation. This is why many "deluxe" or "0.1%" cartridges are quite a bit more expensive than a standard issue cartridge, the cost and effort to get these carts perfect with respect to their ideal specs is costly and time-consuming, and this is why many cartridges need extensive running in before they start to sound good.
So, before passing final judgement, you will need to let your cart run-in a good while before getting a final assessment. Also, if I recall correctly, no one mentioned checking your vertical tracking angle or stylus rake angle of your cartridge. If you can adjust the VTA of your tonearm, you should look into fine-tuning that.
Additionally, it could also be that your stylus from your old cartridge is not as good as the stylus on the A-T with respect to resolving musical detail. This could be due to the fact that the stylus is worn, or the design of the new A-T stylus is superior at resolving detail. Any cart mfr will tell you that it all comes down to the stylus, it's design, mass, tip configuration, orientation, etc. with respect to the cartridge performance. The carts in many mfr lines are identical except for the stylus. For example, the Grado Prestige 1 Black, Green, Blue, Red, Silver, and Gold carts: they are all the same cartridge except that they have better styli and tighter tolerances as you go up the model line from Black to Gold.
Lastly, if you're hearing a lot of surface noise, unless they are physically damaged (as they could be from a worn or damaged stylus or mishandling) your records are dirty, and to remove this noise you have to get them thoroughly clean. While there is very good thread here about cleaning records manually (one that I've contributed my own experiences to), in my experience, no manual method holds a candle to using a record cleaning machine to vacuum out all the groove dirt, soils, oils, and other contaminants. In my own extensive experimentation, the process of vacuuming the cr*p out of the grooves as soon as it's been released by the cleaning surfactant is a critical functional response, and a record that has had a deep cleaning using surfactants, enzymes, and pure water followed at each step by a vacuuming produces markedly superior results to hand-cleaning and drying. I didn't used to think this was the case compared to manual cleaning, but the facts are..it is.
You will be amazed at the improvement this will make even in records that appear to be quite clean. It's as significant as replacing a major component in the amplification chain with a better one.
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