I’m pretty sure Grado did at one point. The first kind of fancy cartridge I ever bought was a F1+ and I think that had a decent tip, IIRC it was quadraphonic compatible and that took some HF tracing ability. The first ML I bought was an Ortofon M20FL, which was a fancy fine-line version of the VMS20E. A great cart as I recall. I’ve always favoured cartridges with good stylus profiles as I am very conscious of end-of-side distortion if present. I just can’t ignore it.
I do get confused about all the variants though; fine-line, micro-line, micro-ridge, Shibata, Geiger etc and have no idea what’s actually on the end of my MP-500! To my mind once you get to this level its all good and EOS distortion shouldn’t be an issue.
It amazes me how few arms have it! I regularly plug this little device or similar:
Simple, effective and cheap (
Amazon). I’d not buy a cartridge unless I was fairly confident the manufacturer could get the tip on straight, and I’d certainly not second-guess major brands like Nagaoka, Ortofon, AT etc, who likely make everyone else’s carts anyway! I just aim for level in all planes on a typical thickness record, e.g. the lovely flat Japanese Blue Note here!