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RE: REVIEW: Shure M97xE Phono Cartridge

Posted by flood2 (A) on November 15, 2016 at 19:18:59

In Reply to: REVIEW: Shure M97xE Phono Cartridge posted by Marc Bratton on November 15, 2016 at 10:19:20:

Interesting comments about the JICO SAS and also the performance of your M97xE.
The Shure "Audiophile Curve" cartridges have a rather mixed reviews, but like you, I found the M97xE to be a very relaxing cartridge to listen to especially for classical and jazz. However, I don't share the same experience over tracking ability! My first unit was bought back in 2005 and I sent back the stylus to Shure for evaluation as not only was the azimuth way off, but the tracking ability was WAY off spec. The replacement was only marginally better for tracking.
Which test discs are you using for setting tracking force? With the Ortofon Test Disc, I could achieve no better than 60um with no buzzing(+14dB with HFNRR test disc) at 1.5g with the stock stylus. The JICO SAS equivalent would get me to 70um (+15dB) at 1.3g.

I also have a V15V (not the xMR version) which with a JICO VN5MR SAS HG stylus allowed me to achieve >80um (>+16dB on HFNRR) tracking ability at 1.3g with no trace of buzzing. HF tracking ability was superb and the V15V SAS combination remains one of my best MMs and handily beats an AT150MLx which required 1.5g to get to 70um.

Your comment about life of the SAS was particularly interesting to me. I haven't taken my SAS styli to the full extent of their life to hear degradation so am not sure whether the grade of diamond used is "worse" than the ones used by AT on the low end models like the AT440MLb, but they claim a life of 1000 hours. I would be surprised if the SAS are significantly different (reduced) given that (given the optical clarity) the diamond tip appears to be more towards the jewellery grade diamond than cheaper industrial grade.
The tip design is such that they will have greatly increased wear rate if the grooves are not pristine.
Secondly, you should get up to about 500 hours before the distortion on a 15kHz tone exceeds 3%. This is not the time to failure but the point where HF distortion starts to become noticeable and you will pick this up on first on inner grooves due to the reduced groove wavelength. The MicroLine tips are almost certainly identical to SAS on AT cartridges.
As I mentioned, the (High Grade) version of the VN5MR SAS was superb in LF tracking and HF tracking, so if you are getting noticeable premature degradation or simply hearing distortion, then something is not quite right! I would look first at arm height since the bearing radius is at the upper end of things at 70 to 80um making the tip very sensitive to SRA. If the SRA is off, then not only will you get scanning loss at HF, but you will also get greatly increased FM distortion. I find ridiculously small errors are audible and I obsess at getting within 0.01mm of my reference measurements for arm height.
I would also suggest verifying antiskate as well.
Regards Anthony

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats

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