09-06-12: Phasecorrect
I find Shure much more musical...to each his own I guess...AT carts are hyper-detailed but yet kind of clinical...
I've been happily living with my AT150MLX for over 4 years now. I have found that it is *very* sensitive to capacitive loading. AT specifies "100-200 pF." 100pF is about the lowest most people would be able to supply, because that's typically the capacitance (give or take) of the turntable's phono cable.
I have a phono stage that enables me to set a wide range of capacitances in fairly small increments. I found that not only is 100-200pF the best range, but that I can hear the differences between 100, 147, and 200 pF loading and found 147 to have the best combination of frequency extension and tonal body. I can't abide it at 300 pF or above. You can also easily hear different settings of SRA. My tonearm has easily adjustable VTF, which enables me to hear that. The cart seems to like a dead flat VTF or with the fulcrum slightly lower than the headshell.
If capacitance or SRA is off, the AT150MLX can sound as you describe, but properly dialed in, it's very musical. OTOH, the Shures have a downward sloping response curve that has more built-in warmth than I prefer.
The AT150MLX uses pretty much the same stylus (MicroLine) as the Shure (MicroRidge) and has the same sort of characteristics in where it sits in the groove, tracking, and (low) surface noise.
