A good cartridge should consistently sound good with any equipment not just with Musical Fidelity. A cartridge however could be a poor match with turntable/tonearm to yield poor sound.
Shure V15VxMR to be discontinued
I saw on needledoctor.com that the V15VxMR was being discontinued - here's a notation from Shure:
"The V15VxMR may be discontinued in early 2005. If it is, the reason
is simple: the worldwide demand for phono cartridges declines every
year. The demand is now so small that specialized suppliers to
Shure no longer want to produce the parts for the V15VxMR. We are
searching for new suppliers but the processes required are very
arcane, thus making it difficult to find new suppliers. Once a final
decision has been made, we will post it on our web site. As of
today, we can only say: maybe."
"If the V15xMR is discontinued, we expect to have replacement styli
for the V15VxMR until late 2006, but that date may change if buying
patterns do not follow past trends. If you want to purchase a
replacement stylus now, seal it in an air-tight jar to keep ozone
away from the stylus bushing."
"The M97xE sells in greater number than the V15VxMR and our suppliers
currently seem happy to continue selling parts. But that too could
change in the future as the phono cartridge market continues to
shrink."
What a shame - the end of an era....
"The V15VxMR may be discontinued in early 2005. If it is, the reason
is simple: the worldwide demand for phono cartridges declines every
year. The demand is now so small that specialized suppliers to
Shure no longer want to produce the parts for the V15VxMR. We are
searching for new suppliers but the processes required are very
arcane, thus making it difficult to find new suppliers. Once a final
decision has been made, we will post it on our web site. As of
today, we can only say: maybe."
"If the V15xMR is discontinued, we expect to have replacement styli
for the V15VxMR until late 2006, but that date may change if buying
patterns do not follow past trends. If you want to purchase a
replacement stylus now, seal it in an air-tight jar to keep ozone
away from the stylus bushing."
"The M97xE sells in greater number than the V15VxMR and our suppliers
currently seem happy to continue selling parts. But that too could
change in the future as the phono cartridge market continues to
shrink."
What a shame - the end of an era....
- ...
- 52 posts total
My Shure V15VxMR will arrive tomorrow; I couldn't pass up the $212 price at Beach Audio. It will be a good cartridge to start with, and it will also be a good backup cartridge once I buy a moving coil design sometime in the future. I noticed that the Shure V15VxMR has a mass of 6.6 grams and a compliance of 25cm according to the Shure web site at (http://www.shure.com/phono/v15vxmr.html and http://shure.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/shure.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=fo48L1qh&p_lva=&p_faqid=807&p_created=985265291&p_sp=cF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTgwJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9VjE1VnhNUiZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li= This web site recommends tonearms with an effective mass between 11 and 12 grams. However, when I use the Van den Hul equation at http://www.vandenhul.com/artpap/phono_faq.htm#a2 to calculate the ideal tonearm effective mass for the Shure V15VxMR so that I can obtain the optimal tonearm/cartridge resonance frequency of 10Hz, which is recommended by Van den Hul, I obtain a tonearm effective mass of approximately 3.532 grams! This difference in effective mass is considerable, and I don't know of any tonearms that are this light. Any comments or observations? Does resonance frequency calculations even apply to the Shure V15VxMR? |
Scottht: If you read some of my older posts about the V15VxMR, you'll find that i'm not a huge fan of this cartridge either. While it is a solid cartridge, it doesn't deserve all of the hype that it gets either. Then again, comparing this cartridge at $375 retail to the $200 that others are finding it at somewhat changes perspective a bit. If one re-reads Fremer's comments about it, you can see that he's not in love with it, but also doesn't hate it. That's kind of how i feel about it. In my opinion, a well tuned Stanton 881S with the proper loading will blow it out of the water. This is part of the reason why Kevin at KAB Electro-Acoustics chose to work with Stanton over Shure when developing some new cartridges. Then again, if you really dig the Grado sound, you might not be crazy about the Stanton either, with or without phono stage loading changes. With that in mind, have you experimented with cartridge loading at all? My experience is that the Shure works best with a very high impedance ( WELL above 47 Kohms ) and as little capacitance as you can get. Bringing the total phono stage impedance up to somewhere between 60 Kohms and 100 Kohms and removing any extraneous capacitance other than that of the phono leads themselvs should give you the best performance that you can get out of this cartridge. If you still don't like it after that, well, i tried : ) Artar: The Shure works best with a low to medium mass arm. It is more forgiving than many other cartridges in terms of tonearm weight due to the "dynamic stabilizer" acting as a damper. While the aforementioned Stanton also shares a "dynamic stabilizer" aka "brush" on the front end, its compliance is even higher, making it less versatile in terms of arm compatibility. Sean > |
Maybe one's view of the Shure V15 depends on "how you were brought up". I like its sound, and find most other pickups to be "colored". (Exception was a MC that I used for a while until discouraged by stylus replacement hassles/cost). My first pickup was the old mono GE, followed by one of the first stereo pickups from Stanton. After that I always used Shure pickups, and I guess my ear is tuned to them. By all objective criteria (things you can actually measure) the Shure comes out on top overall. But then the guy with the highest IQ is not always the most popular. |
- 52 posts total