Shelter 501 versus Soundsmith Zephr ?

Robob,
I did not talk with soundsmith but instead went thru a dealer.

I now have 10 hours on the Soundsmith SMMCI as of may 12 2011 and the cartridge does not sound good so far. I will give it time to break in. very erratic, weird sound anomolies and generally lousey sound.

It turns out that the sound anomolies I had caused to happen by not knowing how to properly load my adjustable phono stage. Just checked with the maker of the preamp/phono stage and they told me how to properly load it at 47K and now the cartridge sounds great, is really starting to open up, large images, a lot of presence, and musically engaging. Definitely worth trying out a sound smith cartridge if you have not already done so ! This is an SMMC1 Sound Smith cartridge, just to clarify. I have heard that the Zephr is an even better match with the VPI tonearms. No complaints here.

I agree, shelter compliance is too high, zephyr is hard to beat on vpi tonearms

Agree with Patsua. The Zephyr was my primary cartridge for quite some time until I got hooked this Spring on Lyra cartridges. I started with the Lyra Delos and moved up to the Kleos. I think the Lyra cartridges sound better on my set-up. My vinyl set up is a hot-rodded basic Classic TT with a Classic 3 tone arm. The rest of my rig is descried in my system link.

Having said that, I've read many Forum post where folks just rave about the S-S Paua cartridge. I definitely have to try the Paua, but when I spring for it, I'll ask Peter Ledermann if he can hot-rod the output to .5 or more mV because the stock job is rated at .3 mV which is too low for my phono pre.

The Zephyr gets an A+ grade from me as a top performer with VPI JMW tone arms at its price point ($1K). It's a shame the Paua costs $3800. That's a pretty big jump in cost to go to the next level. Ergo why I tried the Lyra cartridges. But, I still have my newly re-tipped Zephyr as a back-up.