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shibata or microline, pls respond ONLY if you specifically have tried both.

I only want to hear FIRST hand experience, not lecturing please.

These two seem too confusing to me.  I have a VM540ML AT cartridge and cannot decide whether Shibata or Microline is better.  AGAIN, PLS DO NOT LECTURE ME ABOUT **OTHER** EXPENSIVE CARTRIDGES.

To me obviously the music quality matters.  However, I also give a lot of importance to how durable one stylus over the other one is AND very importantly, which one is easier (less finnicky) to set up.  Also, it is important that the stylus does not degrade the vinyl excessively.

If you tell me an elliptical is easiest to set up but is 10% less musical, I would probably go with that too.

So.... any ACTUAL experience with either of these two styli ?

Thanks

cakyol

Showing 3 responses by chakster

chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
Anyone can easily make a perfect alignment of Shibata or MicroLine if you have a decent protractor (like Dr.Feickert for example), tonearm with VTA adjustment and a headshell with azimuth adjustment, also a little bit of experience in cartridge alignment on a turntable/tonearm. What do you use ? 

MicroLine is equal to MicroRidge (SAS) and both are better than Shibata. Look here. You can use MicroLine longer than Shibata. 

 

But Shibata is also a great profile, why not just use both ? 

Anyway it depends on your system capabilities to reproduce nuances. 

I have cartridges with all those profiles, i would be happy to avoid elliptical (and i don't use conical for sure). If you have Shibata then life is good, MicroLine is even better.  

 
chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
I am not sure that people compared Shibata and MicroLine on the SAME CARTRIDGE to say that Shibata is better.

When we’re comparing one cartridge with Shibata to another cartridge with MicroLine it is not fair comparison.

I don’t think you have to worry about setup with Audiomods tonearm. You just need a proper protractor.

I can’t remember any difficulties with MicroLine stylus, the best ever AT cartridges such as AT-ML170 and AT-ML180 comes with MicroLine stylus. Those carts are giant killers!

It is a bit strange that you need somebody else to tell you which stylus profile is better. I like both Shibata and MicroLine, but on top of the line AT cartridges i like MicroLine.

chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
I know only one tonearm with adjustable everything, even azimuth on the fly, this arm is Reed 3p and related models. 
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