What Cart. for a Infinity Black widow

Rwwear, you have fabulous equipment, and I'm sure there's nothing wrong with your ears. I never said or wrote that the Shure is the most detailed, or the most dynamic and all those audiophile goodies that we are all trained to revere. But in terms of neutrality, I will stand by it, as so many others - professional reviewers included - have done. Also, it is pretty good at all that audiophile stuff. But we are trained to look for ever-finer detail and so forth and eventually lose sight of the music. For those who want to look beyond the obvious audiophile obssessions to something difficult to describe, the essence of music, there are components which do it quietly, like the Shure. Do not assume those who follow the Shure path do so based on reviews. In fact the opposite is true, as the Shure has been dissed in the press ever since the first mega-buck MCs appeared - this is the current dogma, we are trained to look elsewhere: Shure afficionados listen for themselves, against prevailing opinion. My mention of TAS (which after years of damning it with faint praise is just rediscovering this gem - due more to a personal audio journey, a changing outlook) is to point out that people with very expensive systems and access to all kinds of audio goodies, just like yourself, choose the Shure. Different strokes for different folks, but the Shure cannot be dismissed as lightly as you do. The Shure camp is listening for different things than you are, evidently: a matter of personal philosophy. As I wrote before to be more constructive: is your Carnegie (which is also used by a member of TAS) a high-compliance cartridge, and if this so, which implies that the better timing I (and many others) hear in MMs as oppposed to MCs is due to their high compliance, is it perhaps time to start building high-compliance MCs again and so further the art? Isn't that what such a forum is for? And Ecclectique, where can I get a Sonus, as I am increasingly interested in MMs of any sort? And Bro57, how's your Rega doing?

I will listen to the V15 again and keep one in my system. As for my equipment, I mentioned it only because of Dopo or Doper or whatever his name is wanted to imply that it was inferior, to which it is compared to some stuff out there. But it is very musical to most.

Hi. The name is Dave Pogue, but that was taken here at Audiogon, so I'm stuck with initials. Haven't you changed the frame of reference here. Rwwear? I thought the comparison was simply between a new top-line Shure (which you called "mechanical") and an old Carnegie. And the original thread, way back when, was to help a guy choose a cart for his Black Widow. Certainly there are better carts out there, but for this particular application, I still think the Shure, for $200, has a hell of a lot to offer.

Rwwear: from your collection (I also collect 'tables, arms, cartridges) I can see you're open-minded and love analogue as I do. I don't think Dopogue was dissing your system so much as disagreeing with your assessment: I know he has mounted the Shure on a VPI JMW10.5 in a very impressive system like yours. Someone else on this thread went on about liquidness - and having owned a Kiseki Purpleheart Sapphire which had oodles of this - I submit that this is a coloration. And this is where a Shure shines: listen to violins on an MC and then listen to it on a Shure. On MCs violins sound burnished, too "liquid" to be violins. On a Shure it sounds very raspy and meaty, as violins do in life. It was this tiny issue - I was running the Shure on one 'table while running MCs on others - which I noticed and which increasingly drew my attention to it, until I was pretty well completely converted. If you look elsewhere in this forum, you will see that I have a Decca thread going, and so know that different cartridges have different strenghts. I plan on buying a few more MCs soon, as I collect them (I'm a total addict). But if I were forced to choose only one, despite the fact it does not do filigree detail like the better MCs or have the slam of a Decca, I would choose the Shure. One of the reasons is our definition of information. We tend to think only in terms of detail, and though the Shure is respectable here, many beat it. But the rhythmic interactions between the different components of a piece of music - right down to the timing of the rising intensities or softenings of a singer in counterpoint to other instruments - is simply more clearly discernible especially on a Shure, and on MMs in general. First the violins got to me, and then the timing issue. I've been drifting away from the MCs ever since, which while they advance, still do not do the timing thing I can so clearly hear, due to the Shure. Perhaps it simply does not work in your system - hard to believe as you have so many components - but I would be interested to hear if you too hear these two specific things (violins and timing). Perhaps I am dreaming, but I have heard it across many systems, and underground Shure lovers across America hear it as well. There is also that superb tonal correctness, which is important in making obvious what an instrument is. Is your Carnegie high-compliance, or am I confusing it with the Accuphase?

Rwwear; if there really is an issue of mechanical sound in your system using the Shure, there is something I do which does improve resolution (and perhaps "liquidity") quite a lot, something I do with all MMs the moment I get them and so I don't think about it: to glue the removeable stylus in place with three small (very small) dabs of glue: one in the middle (or one top and bottom, depending) and one on each side, while the assembly is fully in place (don't get any inside!). I use fast-drying epoxy-resin, which is more substantial than Crazy Glue, and which means the stylus asssmebly is easily removed come replacement day. All owners of MMs should do this: being standard practice in the days when removeable-stylus MMs were still respected, I think many of us have forgotten now.