Audio Technica stylus upgrade

Happy Holidays,

You have a body that accepts a variety of stylus, and that means you do not need to re-align the cartridge body, a terrific advantage, if you do or especially if you do not have the skills or tools needed.

Amazing Results means the body is properly aligned, great news.

You may have worn your ML stylus out, so:

replace ML, try Shibata, or new cartridge needing alignment?

I doubt there will be much/any generally audible differences between new ML or New Shibata. Expected stylus life is slightly different, so cost difference tends to even out over time.

Going from Aluminum to Boron Cantilever should tighten things up, most evident to me in the low bass, stiffer cantilever’s progress in both ability and price.

After shattering a Shure Beryllium Cantilever, I stop at Boron. 

Why is it then that the best sounding cartridge I have ever heard in my system, or certainly one of the very few "best", has an aluminum cantilever (Ortofon MC2000)?

Well, it’s the cartridges innards, and cantilever's suspension

Ortofon talks about upgrades to Sapphire, then Boron being slightly better than Sapphire

here’s a Boron upgrade

Nude Shibata diamond on a boron cantilever

Stylus

The 2M Black LVB 250 upgrades the great build of the 2M Black with a Nude Shibata diamond on a boron cantilever. The use of an extremely stiff and lightweight Boron cantilever adds remarkable transparency, speed, and responsiveness.

The Nude Shibata stylus’ slim, highly polished profile allows an exceedingly wide contact area to the groove walls and ensures notably detailed reproduction throughout the spectrum, including even the highest frequencies.

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chakster was still around in this discussion of your mc2000

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/classic-ortofon-cartridges-the-mc2000-mk-ii-or-the-mc3000-mk-ii