Please be aware of how records are actually cut, or used to be back in the hey days of it all. This is what I was told by a Decca mastering engineer (all those now pricey 60's classic Decca cuts were often further eq'd to high heaven and I've personally see the evidence on a few tape boxes to kind of prove it)
Usually, no or severely rolled off bass below 40Hz (saves 'land' as less obvious 'squiggles' and granddad's old groove grinder won't jump), remaining bass is mono'd (again, to help prevent jumping), the upper mids are lifted (or bass-lower mids reduced) and a 'hot' master at hf gets a good dose of de-essing quite often. Not sure how much over 15khz was also cut at full spoeed mastering as I understand the cutter didn't always like it. So much was routinely done to get the music cut to an acetate. I also understand that 'DMM' cuts had to remove all sub 60Hz freqwuencies due to the risk of mod noise in the cutting.
So, where does that leave 'neutral' pickups? For me, the reference has to be a properly fine-tipped Decca. Somehow and taking all the compromises into account, A deccapodded Decca with fancy tip has the potential to come closest to the master I think I ever heard, at least until more recently. Trouble is, you enter into an emotional relationship with these darned cartridges, as they're damned unreliable, lop sided in compliance and if not absolutely right in build, diamond choice or setup, they tend to 'twang' a bit - all the fine tuning seems opposite to conventional cartridges too. I still keep my 'Podded' Gold Microscanner in the hope I'll have a suitable deck and arm to use it with (there's a Garrard 401 'rumble box' with an interesting unipivot arm coming as and when I can collect it).
You know, I reckon for general use, you'd do a lot worse than Audio Technica these days. Forgetting the 'foo' models, the venerable AT95E has evolved into a great and well liked series of 'VM95' models, with pretty flat responses and distortion reducing as the styli get better. Their cheaper MC types have consolidated (at least in the UK) into styli variations on their equally evergreen 'OC9' platform and the leaner tones of popular previous versions do seem to be nearer to the 'truth' even if it can be hard to bear.
Loads of others out there and this is where personal opinion comes in. I have a sneaky high regard for Rega's wild 'Apheta' range but the sound can be a bit much for warmer toned lovers and maybe the overload margins of many lesser phono stages.
Sorry for the essay (and hope I got it mostly right above). The killer for vinyl is background ticks and snaps as well as surface noise. A decent modern stylus tip can help take care of the noise annoyance BUT, the overload performance of a phono stage can kill it. I worry about cheaper stages with poor overload margins as even fifty years ago, an overload threshold of 30mV on an 'MM' stage was regarded as very poor indeed, yet some cheaper stages today are similar I believe if I read the figures right. The aforementioned AT VM95's are lower than some, so may offer a better effect here...