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The Shure V15 V with a Jico SAS/B stylus VS The Soundsmith Hyperion MR and Lyra Atlas SL

On a sentimental lark I purchased two Shure V15 V bodies and one SAS/B stylus. I was always a realistic about the Shure's potential. Was comparing it to $10k+ cartridges fair? Absolutely. The Shure was considered to be one of the best cartridges of the day. Why not compare it to a few of the best we have today?

The Shure has always been considered to be unfailingly neutral. Famous recording engineers have said it sounded most like their master tapes. I do not have an original stylus for the Shure and I can not say that the Jico performs as well. 

My initial evaluation was quite positive. It worked wonderfully well in the Shroder CB. With a light mounting plate and small counterbalance weight a resonance point of 8 hz was easily achieved. There was nothing blatantly wrong with the sound. There was no mistracking at 1.2 grams. You can see pictures of all these styluses here https://imgur.com/gallery/stylus-photomicrographs-51n5VF9 

After listening to a bunch of favorite evaluation records my impression was that the Shure sounded on the thin side, lacking in the utmost dynamic impact with just a touch of harshness. I listened to the Shure only for four weeks as my MC phono stage had taken a trip back to the factory. I was using the MM phono stage in the DEQX Pre 8, designed by Dynavector. I have used it with a step up transformer and know it performs well. I got my MC stage back last week and cycled through my other cartridges then back to the Shure. The Soundsmith and Lyra are much more alike than different. I could easily not be able to tell which one was playing. The Lyra is the slightest touch darker. The Shure is a great value....for $480 in today's money, but it can not hold a candle to the other cartridges. They are more dynamic, smoother and quieter. They are more like my high resolution digital files. Whether or not they are $10,000 better is a personal issue. Did the DEQX's phono stage contribute to this lopsided result? Only to a small degree if any. I do have two Shure bodies and they both sound exactly the same. The Shure may have done better with a stock stylus. I do not think the age of the bodies contributes to this result at all. 

128x128mijostyn
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn OP
8,570 posts
 

@russ69 Actually it was 1982 when the V was released. The V MR may have been 84. Walter Stanton invented the removable stylus. The 681 EE was a little later 1968, but the 681 dates back to the late 40s! I liked the EE very much. I had one somewhere in there. I still have the brush in my parts collection. I always took them off. I also had a Win Labs Strain Gauge.....for two months. It came out in 1976-77. I got rid of it quickly. It's tracking ability was terrible. I also hate to tell you this, but the Infinity Black Widow was way too lite for it. It was way too lite for just about everything except cartridges like the V15 and the Stanton. Following the release of the Syrinx PU3 the focus became rigidity and not super low mass. I was running an LP12 with an SME arm on it at the time.

@lewm The TD124 that I bought used had a wooden ADC Pritchard arm on it. It had the sloppiest head shell and could not hold azimuth. I hated it and got my first SME in short order. I think it permanently damaged ADC's reputation for me, but some of their cartridges where highly rated.

@macg19 Actually, your parents paid for it and medical school after that. (Federal Taxes)

dogberry
672 posts
 

@macg19 Actually, your parents paid for it and medical school after that. (Federal Taxes)

Ouch!

I bought a VxMR in, I think, 2006 and enjoyed it for some years on a Planar 3 as my way back into vinyl. Table and cartridge were given away when I moved house. Curiously, I gave away with them a Copland 301 pre-amp, a YBA 1 power amp, and the DCM TimeFrame speakers. Eventually, all except the table and cartridge came back to me, probably due to WAF preferring smaller and neater units that sounded far worse. You can lead a horse to water.....*

*RIP my old neighbour who modified that saying: You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

russ69's avatar
russ69
3,520 posts
 

I also hate to tell you this, but the Infinity Black Widow was way too lite for it.

I tracked it at 2.5 grams, had no trouble with it. It played warped records well.

macg19
940 posts
 

Actually, your parents paid for it and medical school after that. (Federal Taxes)

Unless you went to school in England, they did not:)

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,841 posts
 

@mijostyn You really need to track it a bit heavier- 1.5 helps it a lot. Also, loading it is paramount or it can be a bit in your face like any MM cartridge. If you don't load a MM cartridge, you really don't get to hear what they are about.

If your stylus is good and the suspension not perished, I'd start with about a 22K load and work your way down until the harshness bit is gone, but no loss of higher frequencies. If it seems rolled off, 22KOhms might be too low a load.

Or you can use this calculator which uses a different technique. Since the inductance of your cartridge is 500mH the real variable is the capacitance of your tonearm cable. You can see the results in the graph; obviously a 100pf load (which is very close to many low capacitance phono cables if they are only 1 meter in length) is nearly ideal.

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