Shure M97xE High-Performance Magnetic Phono Cartridge

I am pleased with the performance fo this cartridge for the money.The tone is good could be better and some of the lows are muddy. But for the price it`s a good buy if you are an audiophile or have a good ear then you will want a better cartridge, denon dl-103,110,160 or some others.Stay away from Grado black as its is about the same as the Shure!

Service was great! This is an excellent cartridge. It sounds very good and better than my old one which I've had since the early 80s.

I purchased this cartridge to replace a shure m70ej which I had installed on a rebuilt sanyo tp-1030, as a good replacement stylus for the m70 can be hard to come by. The m97xe tracks excellently, and gives crisp highs, along with strong bass. I find the midrange to be somewhat lacking. Although this cart sounds good, it lacks the warmth of the cartridge it replaced. Those of you who use the LAST preservative might find an improvement in performance, I certainly did. To be fair, I haven't played this cartridge enough for it to be considered broken in, but some AT's I've purchased sounded great out of the box. Ease of installation and the included protractor helped with the score on this product. Most purchasers will be happy with this item, unless you're a hardcore audiophile with 3k dollar tube amps and moving coil cartridges.

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.

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.