Accessories

Perhaps a little too warm...
Overall, the Shure M97xE is a pretty good cartridge. It sounds nice and the dynamic stabilizer works well with old, dusty records, but I tend to find myself turning up the treble on my stereo when I use it. Excellent for softer and more vocal music, but much of the music I listen to is neither particularly soft or vocally based.

Continuing the Shure tradition
When I needed to replace my old Shure V15 Type 5 cartridge, I was disappointed to see that it was no longer available. However, the M97xE seems to match the performance of the old cartridge quite nicely -- considering that the V15 series was a "gold standard" for phono cartridges for many years, that is a solid compliment.

Never heard LPs like this before
After the stylus of my prior Audio Technica AT120 cartridge became inexplicably "mis-aligned" (read bent), I began my search for a new cartridge.

Enter the M97xE, I installed this cartridge in my JVC JL-F45 turntable and initially expected to listen to my albums pretty much the same way I had before. Was I wrong.....

Long story short this is the cleanest sound I have heard from my records in a good long while. I have now listened to music from all across the board with this, from modern power pop link the Ting Tings, to Neil Diamond, to Led Zeppelin, to the beatles, to Queens of the Stone Age. This is by far the best balanced I've ever heard out of my turn table.

Giddy up!

A decent cart for little change.
I was able to procure this little goody from a work bonus. At 60 bucks it is not going to break the bank. That said I will try to perform a fair comparison. It is not a $3000.00 benz micro cartridge. Of course I don't have a VPI turntable either. When compared to all the current carts in my arsenal I would consider this one to be the most listenable. I had a Grado blue cart for quite some time and the one is much more forgiving to aging vinyl. Side by side on a 180g vinyl it sounds much more transparent than the grado. Oh yeah and the grado is around 160 bucks. It out performed my previous audio technica PB33E. Much more midrange and treble clarity. Not all the noise my grado had either on less than perfect wax. After fitting the aforementioned AT cart with a shibata stylus the results were similar. Still yet this shure was less noisy consistently. I have a technics SL22 BD and a fisher MT-6330 direct drive table. I have also listened to this cart on a sumiko project debut III table as well. You will be pleased. Its not quite a V15 but its not expensive either. If you need a decent cart for the price and like listening to your vinyl then you can't go wrong here.

Can be too "laid back" for some systems
I have all solid state gear, and even so, this cartridge sounded much too laid back and warm for my tastes to the point of being bland. I like a little more involvement in my music. I suspect it would sound even more dull with tube gear. I currently run the AT440MLa which has enough "sizzle" for me (without being overly bright).

It's not a "bad" cartridge; some folks love them for the warm sound.

Phono cartridges are inherently subjective so reviews don't really mean much. It's too bad somebody doesn't rent cartridges so a person could try out several. That's the only way to know.