What Cart. for a Infinity Black widow

Rwwear: from your collection (I also collect 'tables, arms, cartridges) I can see you're open-minded and love analogue as I do. I don't think Dopogue was dissing your system so much as disagreeing with your assessment: I know he has mounted the Shure on a VPI JMW10.5 in a very impressive system like yours. Someone else on this thread went on about liquidness - and having owned a Kiseki Purpleheart Sapphire which had oodles of this - I submit that this is a coloration. And this is where a Shure shines: listen to violins on an MC and then listen to it on a Shure. On MCs violins sound burnished, too "liquid" to be violins. On a Shure it sounds very raspy and meaty, as violins do in life. It was this tiny issue - I was running the Shure on one 'table while running MCs on others - which I noticed and which increasingly drew my attention to it, until I was pretty well completely converted. If you look elsewhere in this forum, you will see that I have a Decca thread going, and so know that different cartridges have different strenghts. I plan on buying a few more MCs soon, as I collect them (I'm a total addict). But if I were forced to choose only one, despite the fact it does not do filigree detail like the better MCs or have the slam of a Decca, I would choose the Shure. One of the reasons is our definition of information. We tend to think only in terms of detail, and though the Shure is respectable here, many beat it. But the rhythmic interactions between the different components of a piece of music - right down to the timing of the rising intensities or softenings of a singer in counterpoint to other instruments - is simply more clearly discernible especially on a Shure, and on MMs in general. First the violins got to me, and then the timing issue. I've been drifting away from the MCs ever since, which while they advance, still do not do the timing thing I can so clearly hear, due to the Shure. Perhaps it simply does not work in your system - hard to believe as you have so many components - but I would be interested to hear if you too hear these two specific things (violins and timing). Perhaps I am dreaming, but I have heard it across many systems, and underground Shure lovers across America hear it as well. There is also that superb tonal correctness, which is important in making obvious what an instrument is. Is your Carnegie high-compliance, or am I confusing it with the Accuphase?

Rwwear; if there really is an issue of mechanical sound in your system using the Shure, there is something I do which does improve resolution (and perhaps "liquidity") quite a lot, something I do with all MMs the moment I get them and so I don't think about it: to glue the removeable stylus in place with three small (very small) dabs of glue: one in the middle (or one top and bottom, depending) and one on each side, while the assembly is fully in place (don't get any inside!). I use fast-drying epoxy-resin, which is more substantial than Crazy Glue, and which means the stylus asssmebly is easily removed come replacement day. All owners of MMs should do this: being standard practice in the days when removeable-stylus MMs were still respected, I think many of us have forgotten now.

Johnnantais, Do you mean the Shure stylus assembly is held rigidly bound in position with the glue, but the glue contact points can be broken by simple pulling away from the cartridge body when it is time to replace a stylus assembly? Do you need to wiggle the stylus assembly to break it free from the glue's grip? If there is a different definition, or meaning, please clarify.
Does the stylus assembly now act solely as a rigid continuation of the cartridge body, or is there some molecular absorption of resonance or vibration at the glue points?
Also, which brand of fast-drying epoxy resin do you use, as there are so many at hobby shops?
I first tried this with the laser assembly of my Cd player, and it works perfectly, preventing me from hearing any of that objectionable CD sound ;>) Now I'm ready to try it on my vinyl rig. If anything more goes wrong, I'll be reduced to FM tuner listening, with my family threatening to optimize that with just a touch of epoxy to the tuning knob!
Actually, thanks for conveying in such detail how you get things done.

I'm not sure about the compliance or not. It was a store demo that I got from a friend. I'll listen to the Shure again soon as I will be installing one in a customer's system. I usually have one of my own but I sold it to a customer that needed it. The SME arm that I have on my main TT is probably more suited to MCs though.
Have you had a chance to listen to the Walcot MM cartridge with the Shibata stylus? I bought some new old stock about a year ago and put one on my SP-10MK11 that I have at the store. But, I haven't listened to it critically in a good system.

Listener57, any "five-minute" glass-epoxy resin will do, but usually the really cheap stuff need not apply. Try to buy something of better quality. And be careful, as some of this stuff is black and some is clear when it cures. I buy the stuff which comes in a double syringe (though sometimes this is cheap and messy; the tubes are cleaner in the long run), which is convenient as it gives you perfect mix - again buy expensive here too. Pick the stuff you like. It all takes 24 hours to cure completely. I like the glass-epoxy because it is substantial unlike Crazy Glue which tends to dissolve plastic and paint and so does fuse the components. The epoxy bridges the gap at the four points (in any MM) in little blobs which turn to glass, thus effectively making the MM a single unit. The blobs are easy to break off with a little screwdriver when the time comes for a new stylus. This makes a huge difference, cleaning up the highs and focusing everything.

Rwwear, I actually haven't heard of the Walcot MMs, but I have a great respect for NOS stuff, as I recently acquired a NOS Supex which is actually superb (livelier than most of the new stuff and with the usual MC strengths), and a NOS Acutex 320 with Shibata stylus that was a true high-end performer which matched the legendary Purpleheart Sapphire in the highs and lows, with a touch of recessed midrange, but at that price, who cares...and it's reproduction of strings (more liquid than water!) was perhaps the best I've ever heard, at least in "liquid" terms. If you have any more, I'd be interested. As to the Shure V15, it was called the "V" apparently because it was designed with the SME V in mind, it's just that people don't normally pair an MM with such an expensive tonearm. I've personally never heard the Shure in a SME, but one of the reviewers at TAS does use it this way. If you do try this, then please report on your findings, at least to me, as I would like to know how it sounds here. The Shure seems to prefer medium-mass over low-mass tonearms, so those Shure engineers do know what they are doing, if they had the SME V in mind. But it really opens up in medium mass unipivots (bearing in mind I haven't heard it in a SME). Keep us posted, and listen to those violins and timing. It's like the imaging thing: you have to get "educated" before you can actually hear the imaging in a stereo, as your mind has not learned to expect this/hear it when a novice. The timing of MMs is like this too: the Shure showed me the way here, but slowly and over time, showing me complex timing relationships I wasn't really aware existed until the violins drew my attention. And once I heard this, I knew it was more important to the music than all those things MCs are traditionally strong at. Like so many reviewers write when reviewing the Shure, "it just sounds right." But they usually attribute this rightness to the tonality, which is only half the story.