2. analog
  3. 152336-117192

shibata or microline, pls respond ONLY if you specifically have tried both.

I only want to hear FIRST hand experience, not lecturing please.

These two seem too confusing to me.  I have a VM540ML AT cartridge and cannot decide whether Shibata or Microline is better.  AGAIN, PLS DO NOT LECTURE ME ABOUT **OTHER** EXPENSIVE CARTRIDGES.

To me obviously the music quality matters.  However, I also give a lot of importance to how durable one stylus over the other one is AND very importantly, which one is easier (less finnicky) to set up.  Also, it is important that the stylus does not degrade the vinyl excessively.

If you tell me an elliptical is easiest to set up but is 10% less musical, I would probably go with that too.

So.... any ACTUAL experience with either of these two styli ?

Thanks

128x128cakyol
chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
Anyone can easily make a perfect alignment of Shibata or MicroLine if you have a decent protractor (like Dr.Feickert for example), tonearm with VTA adjustment and a headshell with azimuth adjustment, also a little bit of experience in cartridge alignment on a turntable/tonearm. What do you use ? 

MicroLine is equal to MicroRidge (SAS) and both are better than Shibata. Look here. You can use MicroLine longer than Shibata. 

 

But Shibata is also a great profile, why not just use both ? 

Anyway it depends on your system capabilities to reproduce nuances. 

I have cartridges with all those profiles, i would be happy to avoid elliptical (and i don't use conical for sure). If you have Shibata then life is good, MicroLine is even better.  

 
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
I have five different stylus profiles including those two and I am not sure how much they affect the performance of any individual cartridge. These are all great cartridges in their own right and all a little different. Their tracking ability is a little different but I am not sure how much the stylus profile affects this either. You would have to put these styluses on exactly the same cartridge to figure this out.
cakyol's avatar
cakyol OP
940 posts
 
Thanks to everyone who responded.
I have a Linn Sondek with the Audiomods arm.  Altho it is a great arm, it does not have an azimuth adjustment since the headshell is fixed Rega head.  Sondek itself is a bit funnicky anway in trying to get the armboard exactly parallel in all directions with the plinth.  That is why I was open to styli which are not (too) sensitive to setting up.
teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
shibata tends to sound just a hair richer than microline/microridge/SAS
More to discover