Both are good sounding cartridges, Their character will depend in your Phonostage and Frontend in general too. From my memory the shelter shows a good Bass, full tones, the Zyx shows more detail and is generally a bit different in overall Balance. It has a short Diamond which collects dust easily, so some cleaning should be done more otherwise the higher frequencies suffer. But this is no big deal. I think, the Zyx has a longer life, Shelters can go down pretty fast, I had two on loan which started to get weak and they didn't have so many hours on it.