Best Budget Phono Cartrige...

[poopydoopynoopy]

Hi Folks.

I am currently looking for a cheaper cart for daily listening, to retire/store my Goldring Eroica H that came with my mmf 7 TT.
I am looking at a Shure M97XE,
and Grado Black/Green.
May I have opinions please?
BTW I listen with 60" ribbon speakers and a Audiosource amp seven T amplifier.
My preamp is a Carver HR 875 for now, with a planned Carver C1 Sonic Holography preamp for the TT's eventually...
Thank you !

paul

 

[vinylkid58]

What's the budget?

Jeff

 

[poopydoopynoopy]

100 USD or less...

 

[jaudio]

http://cgi.ebay.com/DIGITRAC-200-NE...568825&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=72:1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318

I like it better than grados black and green. I ordered 3 had to send 1 back for a replacement,very low output.

 

[vinylkid58]

Ortofon 2M red. Should give the Shure a run for the money.

Ortofon OM20/OM30 Super: over your budget new, but look for low hours used.

Audio Technica AT120E: same price as the Shure and similar specs.

Audio Technica AT440ml: $20 over budget but may be too bright for your system.

Jeff

 

[jaudio]

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-102556.html

 

[Werner]

The Shure has bad quality control.

I've encountered more than one sample with bad vertical
stylus to generator alignment and the resulting sub-standard channel separation.


http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/shure_m97xe_e.html

This was also found by a contributor to the Hifi News magazine. Reporting this to Shure that company simply de-specified the M97xe to the abysmall level of 18dB channel separation.

 

[Salas]

Werner is the last man on earth that writes a true and complete analogue review on e-press, or any other press for that matter. Kudos.

 

[dsavitsk]

The Shure has bad quality control.

But the review is otherwise pretty positive. You can get them for about $50 in the US now. I'm happy with mine for that.

 

[Werner]

I started to spot the out of spec M97s only after the review was published. I then notified this in a reader's letter to TNT, but this was never published on the site. The editor's reasoning was that since I was a writer I could not be a reader.