Hello Shane and all,
Given my long participation as a stereo mag editor, then AV magazine editor and reviewer, I can shed some light here on phono cartridge designs. Basically, Stanton, Shure and Grado, all American companies, produced "linear" moving-magnet cartridges; the design goal, as with Axiom speakers, was wide, smooth frequency responses, with no peculiar peaks or dips or oddities like a built-in high-frequency boost around 10 kHz to 15 kHz, to give the sound added "air" as some of the tweako magazines called it.
These cartridges, especially the Stantons were quite robust, which is why Stantons became a favorite of most radio stations and DJs, because they weren't fragile and easily damaged. Likewise some models from Shure had those qualities.
Ortofon, a German brand, and some other European cartridges, seldom had the wide smooth frequency response of their US competitors, and they often had fragile stylus assemblies. In our tests of tracking abilities, Ortofon never did very well; they'd go into distortion when the grooves got highly modulated, whereas the Shures and Stantons would sail through difficult-to-track passages with ease.
As to compatibility with separate custom tonearms, Shure, Grado and some other brands produced high-end models (the V15s, Grado Signatures, etc) with very high-compliance stylus assemblies that demanded a custom tonearm if you were to get optimal performance--really excellent tracking ability at very low stylus pressures (1.25 gram or less).
Moving-coil cartridges developed a big following in the tweak community, partly because they rarely had linear frequency response, so each brand had its own "sound", often a high treble peak that exaggerated the upper octaves. Some of these were said to be built by elderly Japanese gentlemen who hand-wound the coils in some Tokyo basement. There was all sorts of mysticism and exotica surrounding these cartridges, which the tweak magazines (Absolute Sound, STereophile) adored, and they sold at preposterous prices despite the fact they didn't track very well or have smooth frequency responses. (An exception was a moving-coil cartridge I tested from Fidelity Research.) It's not all that different now in the vinyl/cartridge community. Some of the "warmth" attributed to "the vinyl sound" is actually a product of non-smooth frequency response and excessive distortion from some cartridges that lend a coloration to the cartridge's output.
Regards,
Alan
