Shure V15VxMR to be discontinued

Scottht: If you read some of my older posts about the V15VxMR, you'll find that i'm not a huge fan of this cartridge either. While it is a solid cartridge, it doesn't deserve all of the hype that it gets either. Then again, comparing this cartridge at $375 retail to the $200 that others are finding it at somewhat changes perspective a bit.

If one re-reads Fremer's comments about it, you can see that he's not in love with it, but also doesn't hate it. That's kind of how i feel about it. In my opinion, a well tuned Stanton 881S with the proper loading will blow it out of the water. This is part of the reason why Kevin at KAB Electro-Acoustics chose to work with Stanton over Shure when developing some new cartridges. Then again, if you really dig the Grado sound, you might not be crazy about the Stanton either, with or without phono stage loading changes.

With that in mind, have you experimented with cartridge loading at all? My experience is that the Shure works best with a very high impedance ( WELL above 47 Kohms ) and as little capacitance as you can get. Bringing the total phono stage impedance up to somewhere between 60 Kohms and 100 Kohms and removing any extraneous capacitance other than that of the phono leads themselvs should give you the best performance that you can get out of this cartridge. If you still don't like it after that, well, i tried : )

Artar: The Shure works best with a low to medium mass arm. It is more forgiving than many other cartridges in terms of tonearm weight due to the "dynamic stabilizer" acting as a damper. While the aforementioned Stanton also shares a "dynamic stabilizer" aka "brush" on the front end, its compliance is even higher, making it less versatile in terms of arm compatibility. Sean
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Maybe one's view of the Shure V15 depends on "how you were brought up". I like its sound, and find most other pickups to be "colored". (Exception was a MC that I used for a while until discouraged by stylus replacement hassles/cost).

My first pickup was the old mono GE, followed by one of the first stereo pickups from Stanton. After that I always used Shure pickups, and I guess my ear is tuned to them.

By all objective criteria (things you can actually measure) the Shure comes out on top overall. But then the guy with the highest IQ is not always the most popular.

By the way, regarding arm mass, my V15 lives in a Sony "Biotracer" (servo controlled) arm, that has essentially zero mass. Pick it up and it feels "strange" like a wet noodle. Anyway, the Shure works very well in this arm. It tracks well (trackability test LP) at 1 gram, which, if you believe the brush is worth 1/2 gram, means 1/2 gram.

The Shure's suffer from non-linear distortions that are amplitude based. The louder the recorded passage, the more distortion that you get.

I think that this has a lot to do with cantilever rigidity ( or lack of it ). This is why the Shure tends to sound slightly squashed, mushy, grungy and fuzzy on peaks i.e. all of the energy in the groove isn't translated into vertical deflection. This is due to flexing of their thin walled hollow telescopic cantilever design. On top of that, the increased loss of vertical deflection helps to keep the stylus in the groove, which improves trackability but lessens sonic accuracy. Now factor in the "dynamic stabilizer" and you've got yet another reason why the Shure can stay in the groove. That is, the dynamic stabilizer acts as a shock absorber for the cantilever.

While Shure was shooting for reduced tip mass and the associated increase in "tip speed", they ended up trading off efficient energy transfer characteristics in the process by using a less rigid cantilever. Not only is there less cross section area in a telescoping design, you also have more "slop" where the individual segments of the assembly are joined together. That is, in comparison to a one piece cantilever where there are no segmented joints to worry about.

On top of that, surface noise consists of very rapid rise time transients. Since the Shure ends up losing much of the very fast, high amplitude impulse power of a "tick" or "pop" due to the aforementioned lack of cantilever deflection, it tends to sound somewhat smoother, softer and quieter. While this brings a somewhat endearing quality to records in poor shape, it is far from accurate or "good" at doing its job. That job consists of translating energy contained in the grooves to music coming out of your speakers in an accurate fashion. After all, if we lose information at the source, you can't recover it elsewhere. In effect, the Shure is coloured, but in a way that is euphonicly pleasant* to many people's ears. Sean
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PS... If the Shure actually had lower reciprocating mass, it would have a higher resonant frequency than it does. In this regards, the Stanton 881S is superior as it offers wider bandwidth. Wider bandwidth means faster rise and fall times with increased accuracy and treble detail due to a reduction in overshoot and ringing. That wider bandwidth is achieved due to both a more efficient motor structure and lower moving mass. The 881S also has tighter channel balance, for more precise stereo imaging. The bottom line is a more natural presentation than that of the Shure, IF properly dialed in.

PPS... The original 881S stylus assembly is superior to that of the 881S Mk II. If you can find them and want the best performance from this cartridge, get one of the originals. You can always use the stylus assembly that came with the Mk II cartridge as a spare or replacement as needed.

PPSS... The Stanton is lower output than the Shure, so you may need more gain in the phono stage.

*STEREOPHILE July, 1997
Cold out of the box, the V15 sounded warm. Over time it got even warmer, though the bass tightened up a bit. By any definition, the new V15VxMR is a warm, sweet-sounding cartridge. Its basic nature, coupled with its superb tracking ability, yielded a completely grain- and etch-free sonic picture that was never fatiguing or hard-sounding. Michael Fremer

Sean...Interesting discussion of the V15's characteristics. Strange though that you finish up with the favorable comment from Stereophile.

ALL phono pickups increase in distortion as the groove modulation increases, rather dramatically for the very loud passages. Overcoming this problem was, in my opinion, the greatest advantage of DBX-processed LP's.

For those who missed out on the brief period of DBX LP availability, DBX LP processing was similar to Dolby processing for cassette tapes, and involved dynamic range compression when the disk was cut, and complementary expansion when it was played back. This meant that the pickup was always near its optimum operating conditions. Never too soft, so that surface noise was offensive, and never too loud so as to cause increased distortion. Most people were blown away by the noise reduction, like a CD, but I found that improved pickup performance was very noticeable. (And not only with the Shure pickup).

Incidentally, the comparison between Dolby and DBX in the business sense is informative. DBX would not license its process to other hardware manufacturers, or charged a very high fee. Dolby practically gave away their chips, so that they quickly appeared in every tape deck. Dolby was among the first to realize that there is more money to be made in software than in hardware.