Worth investing in Shure carts and stylii, yet?

[Doghouse]

I've had a Shure cart, for about 40 years. an M75 ED in my vintage Philips turntable.

I've tw vinyl jukeboxes, one uses an M44 MR the other an N44C

I'm happy with all of them.

 

[SterlingOne]

To stay with your theme- Is there any loss in quality if one was to acquire a similar stylus from Jico, but, for a less expensive body, e.g., an M91 orM95?

Well, I do not know. I had some experience with an M91 on a Dual TT long ago; but, not being inspired by it or the TT, I upgraded to a Sony PS-4750 TT to which I mounted a V15III. I still have that cartridge without a stylus for the moment and I have two V15V-MR's. One has original stylus and the other, mentioned in my earlier post, has a JICO SAS stylus. The JICO stylus sounds over all a little bit better in all manner than the Shure stylus. BTW, I also have a Shure M97xE. It sounds wonderful until compared to the V15V-MR with JICO SAS stylus. Finally, I have an Ortofon 2M Red, which I purchased for experimentation. I wanted to see if I could get the correct VTA from it by some means when mounted to the non-adjustable PS-4750. The idea was if I could get the desired results I would invest in an Ortofon 2M Black to run on that TT. And, although I did manage to get the proper VTA via an Ortofon SH-4 headshell, I decided there was no point to taking the expensive Ortofon route since the Shure/JICO mounted to my more adjustable Technics SL-1210 was getting me all the pleasure I could stand.

 

[SterlingOne]

I’ll don my flame suit and say there’s a stupid bubble around anything Shure since they pulled out of the cartridge biz due to dated designs and poor quality control. Not to say that they’re not worth a new stylus if you have one, but there’s a lot of wonderful stuff from Audio Technica, Grado, Ortofon, etc. that I think beats the pants off the Shures I’ve owned (mostly M97’s), and doesn’t require paying out the nose for aftermarket styli.

Yeah, the aftermarket JICO SAS for Shure is not particularly appealing unless you've already got the cartridge mounted to a TT which as a system has pleased you. I don't think however that anything out there today beats the pants off the V15V-MR. Of course, I have not heard everything that's out there today; but, I do know I get the detail and tone from LPs that I get with SACDs when my TT is running the Shure.

 

[p.robustini]

I’ll don my flame suit and say there’s a stupid bubble around anything Shure since they pulled out of the cartridge biz due to dated designs and poor quality control. Not to say that they’re not worth a new stylus if you have one, but there’s a lot of wonderful stuff from Audio Technica, Grado, Ortofon, etc. that I think beats the pants off the Shures I’ve owned (mostly M97’s), and doesn’t require paying out the nose for aftermarket styli.

Well, rationality would call for purchasing modern products: why should an old cartridge perform better than a modern one? At least if one takes for granted that progress leads to better technologies even in phono cartridges. And for "shure" the bubble is there - I've seen absurd prices for an M97xE!
I do love Grados but I have damaged styli, so even this Shure and a simple AT95e made my beliefs shake a bit.
I can't wait comparing my Grados with the Shure I'm running now, as soon as I receive my Black2 stylus replacement. But I would compare a Shure Me97HE with Nagaoka ED stylus vs. a Grado Gold0 with Black2 stylus vs. a Grado 8MX with damaged 8MZ stylus vs. AT95HE with slightly offset cantilever - I don't think it would be a greatly revealing comparison... ;-)