You have a cartridge that my friend owned and we expected to love it, sadly neither of us liked it. I think you should go for one with superior specs for imaging, i.e. both wider channel separation and especially tight center balance, i.e. o.5db
He was given it as a gift, lacked a Step Up Transformer, couldn’t play it, so I hooked it up here, broke it in around 50 hrs, it never sounded exceptional to either one of us. He bought a SUT, tried it in his system, same lack of enthusiasm. Other cartridges sound much more involving in both of our systems, they are both quite revealing.
New, I was buying boron cantilevers, I got lucky with a used sapphire tube on a Sumiko Talisman S sounds terrific here and there. Shapes, I have Shibata, SAS, Microlinear, brands Sumiko, Shure, AT, Grace, and friends bring their cartridges here, I should start keeping a list. I’ve convinced myself I can hear differences, it’s easy when someone else agrees, but I know we can hear what we want to hear, I try to protect myself from that.
The last few years I started taking risks on used cartridges, both MC and lately MM, and am extremely happy with vintage AT160ML, because of it’s beryllium cantilever and Microline Stylus. I bought two from this seller, found NOS in Australia (broke it like an idiot), and just bought a spare via Yahoo.Japan auctions.
I have VAS check them before I play them, so far getting lucky.
Oh, I almost forgot, it tracks at nominal 1.25g which is another reason I use it rather than my MC's which track at 2.0g, I loved my shure V15Vxmr that tracked at nominal 1.0g. A member here tracks his AT160ml at 1.0g, I simply stay in the middle of the range given.