1989 Article
Shure gets a bum rap from everyone. Audiophiles are down on them because they're so cheap—the V15 Type V-MR selling at a typical street price of $129. Not that most of these 'philes have actually heard the V. And if they have, it's probably in a grotty arm on a budget table in a Cheapskate system. Put the V in a Rega RB300, or better yet in an SME 309, and you may be amazed at what it can do. Cheap arms can make the Shures sound hashy, harsh in the treble. It's not the cartridge; it's the arm.
High-end dealers are down on them because they would be lucky to make $10 margin selling a V15 Type V-MR; you can buy it almost as cheaply as they can! That makes it a terrific recommendation in my book. If they carry the V at all, which is doubtful, they are not eager to demo it against, say a $1200 moving-coil, on which they might make up to $600 margin.
Here's another reason to go for a Shure: record wear. There isn't any with a properly maintained Shure. I've been using mostly Shures since 1958 and I have, in all that time,
never worn out a record. True, I have so many records that I'm not likely to wear out an LP with any cartridge, but my library wasn't always so large.
Last summer, I visited our esteemed editor John Atkinson in Santa Fe. He played some records on his Linn. They were all worn—every one. Not from neglect, but from cartridge gouging: low-compliance moving-coils that just scraped their way through the vinyl. Now tell me: what's worse? Losing a little detail by using a Shure, but saving your records? Or extracting a little more detail with a low-compliance moving-coil but rendering your records so worn that you soon won't want to listen to them with
any cartridge? With most of your LPs now irreplaceable, give this one some thought. I have, and I'm sticking with Shure.
In the September '89 issue a reader wrote and asked if I really meant it that a typical moving-coil, in a typical audiophile's system, might last six months or so. I
did mean it. That's how long most of my tweak friends seem to keep a particular moving-coil before replacing it with another. Some 'philes spend $2000 a year, year in and year out, on moving-coils. This is insane.
Buy a Shure V15 Type V-MR and you can rejuvenate it instantly with a $79 replacement stylus (typical street selling price, again). Incidentally, the replacement stylus for the Type V-MR will fit in the Ultra 500 cartridge body and work perfectly, so far as I can tell. What's more, because a Shure tracks so lightly and so well, the stylus is usually good for at least 1000 hours
vsmaybe half that time for a low-compliance, poor-tracking moving-coil. At $79 for a replacement stylus, that's 8 cents an hour to run your cartridge. If you buy a $1200 moving-coil and use it for, let's say, 500 hours, that's $2.40 an hour. It costs you 30 times as much!—
Sam Tellig
Sam Tellig returned to the V15 V-MR in November 1989 (Vol.12 No.11): Larry Archibald once told me that I managed to find myself on the horns of every hi-dilemma there is: CD or LP? I flip over the convenience of CD and the fact I don't have to flip over the disc. But I find, still, that LPs, at...
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