surface noise reduction

Yet I might invest in a better cart one of these days.

@boxcarman If you are listening carefully and without bias, I think you'll find that the ability of the arm to track the cartridge correctly is far more important than what cartridge you have.

Of course to do that the cartridge must be compatible with the arm; it must be a proper weight and have compliance such that the cartridge mounted in the arm will create a mechanical resonance between 7 and 12Hz.

So you can't just get any cartridge that might be more expensive; if a cheaper cartridge is more compatible with your arm it will sound better (as long as you've also paid attention to proper loading if the cartridge is MM and high output).

+1

In addition, the OP might read again the earlier post by Atma on the importance of loading and phono stage design. The net message was not that you need a new cartridge.

After checking all settings and they are correct, I inspected for tonearm angle and tracking weight, which was only a little off, I finally checked the azimuth carefully.  What I found was it too was setup correctly, BUT, a fabric fiber was stuck on the side of the stylus! My bad, since I do not let anyone else touch it.  Problem solved, plays well now.  Still thinking about the Audio Technica microline cart......It's what we do.

Yeah it doesn't take much dirt on the stylus to make things noisy. I've had that happen to me also.  

I've also noticed that on at least a couple of pieces of modern music they are adding surface static noise as a production method.  Adds to the ambience or something. 

The other vexing thing about vinyl is that as the cartridge and system gets better and more revealing more of the imperfections of the vinyl process is revealed.  But I do think that stylus shapes like the shibata can bypass a lot of surface junk that simple shapes will run over.

Before spending on a different cart, try cleaning your record. There are several good cleaning systems that you can use on your turntable without spending of a cleaning machine. DiscDoctor makes such a product.

Second, clean your stylus. That’s easy and inexpensive. (See Soundsmith site for instructions.)

Since you’re using a MM cartridge, I can’t make any suggestions in that area except to consider acquiring a phono stage that can handle BOTH MM and MC cartridges to give you more flexibility in cartridge selection.