2. analog
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What's your go-to cheapie cartridge?

Let's say $300 or less. This would be your "y'know, this thing is pretty darn musical even though I've got higher end carts" cartridge. In my case I'd have to say it's my 103R. Not as transparent or fast as a lot of my better carts, but it sails smoothly through the grooves and just sounds good. 
tonyptony
Post removed 
tyray
677 posts
 
I took a chance and bought a used Shure V15VxMR MM cartridge for 220 CAN which ended up being $150 bucks US hoping nothing was wrong with it as they normally go for $500 and installed a JICO SAS VN5xMR stylus and to my surprise it worked just fine and have been using this setup for awhile now.

And this is after 'retiring' my Shure M91ED cartridge I bought for $35 and installed a JICO SAS N91ED stylus with boron.
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
Big fan of the Jico SAS stylus here too.
Have an old Shure M91ED too that gained new life with a Jico SAS stylus.
However at $200+ for a genuine SAS stylus it does push that total price up unless you got the cart for next to nothing to start with.
vegasears
1,173 posts
 
AT-14sa with OEM stylus.
big_greg
6,674 posts
 
I just mounted my old Shure M97xE with JICO SAS stylus on my "new" JVC QL-Y66F and it sounds great!  It came with a Stanton 981HZS cartridge, which was nice sounding also, but it seemed to be more sensitive to airborne vibration and was less forgiving of surface noise. 
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