In its day the Shure V15 was just an average cartridge. Many better cartridges were available. Dynavector and Grado come to mind.
The Shure V15 V with a Jico SAS/B stylus VS The Soundsmith Hyperion MR and Lyra Atlas SL
On a sentimental lark I purchased two Shure V15 V bodies and one SAS/B stylus. I was always a realistic about the Shure's potential. Was comparing it to $10k+ cartridges fair? Absolutely. The Shure was considered to be one of the best cartridges of the day. Why not compare it to a few of the best we have today?
The Shure has always been considered to be unfailingly neutral. Famous recording engineers have said it sounded most like their master tapes. I do not have an original stylus for the Shure and I can not say that the Jico performs as well.
My initial evaluation was quite positive. It worked wonderfully well in the Shroder CB. With a light mounting plate and small counterbalance weight a resonance point of 8 hz was easily achieved. There was nothing blatantly wrong with the sound. There was no mistracking at 1.2 grams. You can see pictures of all these styluses here https://imgur.com/gallery/stylus-photomicrographs-51n5VF9
After listening to a bunch of favorite evaluation records my impression was that the Shure sounded on the thin side, lacking in the utmost dynamic impact with just a touch of harshness. I listened to the Shure only for four weeks as my MC phono stage had taken a trip back to the factory. I was using the MM phono stage in the DEQX Pre 8, designed by Dynavector. I have used it with a step up transformer and know it performs well. I got my MC stage back last week and cycled through my other cartridges then back to the Shure. The Soundsmith and Lyra are much more alike than different. I could easily not be able to tell which one was playing. The Lyra is the slightest touch darker. The Shure is a great value....for $480 in today's money, but it can not hold a candle to the other cartridges. They are more dynamic, smoother and quieter. They are more like my high resolution digital files. Whether or not they are $10,000 better is a personal issue. Did the DEQX's phono stage contribute to this lopsided result? Only to a small degree if any. I do have two Shure bodies and they both sound exactly the same. The Shure may have done better with a stock stylus. I do not think the age of the bodies contributes to this result at all.
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@lewm I'm not sure which V15 I owned. I had just sold my Thorens TD124 and was using a Sony belt drive with an SME on it. Free from rumble at last. Cartridges usually did not last more than a year for me. After the Shure there was a Stanton and then a B+O which I kept through collage. |
I bought the Shure V15-4 body and a new Jico SAS with the boron cantilever. I love it! My Rock records really sing, and it was just the presentation I was looking for. I like it much better than my ZU/Denon DL103 which cost me $600.00 back in 2010. It is also better than my Audio Technica VM540 MM cartridge. |
@russ69 I'm talking back in 1964 when the V15 was released. It had very little if any serious competition at the time. My father was still using an ESL cartridge at 5 grams. |
Your title says Shure V15 V. That was released in 1984. Not sure what a V15 sounded like in 1964 I was only 10 years old. I remember the Stanton 681 EE being a competitor to the Shure. My first memorable cartridge was a Win Labs Strain gauge in an Infinity Black Widow arm. That was around 1975 I think. |
@russ69 Actually it was 1982 when the V was released. The V MR may have been 84. Walter Stanton invented the removable stylus. The 681 EE was a little later 1968, but the 681 dates back to the late 40s! I liked the EE very much. I had one somewhere in there. I still have the brush in my parts collection. I always took them off. I also had a Win Labs Strain Gauge.....for two months. It came out in 1976-77. I got rid of it quickly. It's tracking ability was terrible. I also hate to tell you this, but the Infinity Black Widow was way too lite for it. It was way too lite for just about everything except cartridges like the V15 and the Stanton. Following the release of the Syrinx PU3 the focus became rigidity and not super low mass. I was running an LP12 with an SME arm on it at the time. @lewm The TD124 that I bought used had a wooden ADC Pritchard arm on it. It had the sloppiest head shell and could not hold azimuth. I hated it and got my first SME in short order. I think it permanently damaged ADC's reputation for me, but some of their cartridges where highly rated. @macg19 Actually, your parents paid for it and medical school after that. (Federal Taxes) |
Ouch! I bought a VxMR in, I think, 2006 and enjoyed it for some years on a Planar 3 as my way back into vinyl. Table and cartridge were given away when I moved house. Curiously, I gave away with them a Copland 301 pre-amp, a YBA 1 power amp, and the DCM TimeFrame speakers. Eventually, all except the table and cartridge came back to me, probably due to WAF preferring smaller and neater units that sounded far worse. You can lead a horse to water.....* *RIP my old neighbour who modified that saying: You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think. |
@mijostyn You really need to track it a bit heavier- 1.5 helps it a lot. Also, loading it is paramount or it can be a bit in your face like any MM cartridge. If you don't load a MM cartridge, you really don't get to hear what they are about. If your stylus is good and the suspension not perished, I'd start with about a 22K load and work your way down until the harshness bit is gone, but no loss of higher frequencies. If it seems rolled off, 22KOhms might be too low a load. Or you can use this calculator which uses a different technique. Since the inductance of your cartridge is 500mH the real variable is the capacitance of your tonearm cable. You can see the results in the graph; obviously a 100pf load (which is very close to many low capacitance phono cables if they are only 1 meter in length) is nearly ideal. |
@macg19 It is called a public health service scholarship. The Feds paid for everything. @atmasphere OK I'm game. The phono section has the typical 47K input impedance. There are no facilities for loading or capacitance. So, if I put 47k resistors across the input jacks that would do it yes? I'll try 1.5 grams although it was not having any trouble at 1.2. |
@mijostyn Yeah, Shure claimed 1.2 gr was OK, but IME it isn't. Back then a number of cartridge manufacturers were in a bit of a competition to see who could get to the lowest tracking pressure, as they all seemed to think that was the major component to record wear, when the real culprit was clumsy tonearms. I would try 22K across the input, so the total load is actually about 15K. |
@atmasphere OK, I ordered two 22k Vishay resistors. |
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@mijostyn : of course you have to try about and it's interesting to read this review:
https://www.vinylengine.com/library/shure/v15.shtml V-MR test report ( 1984 ). Btw, are you hearing a kind of harshness in your cartridge today set up?
R. |
@mijostyn Dude, you do know I was just messin' with you, right?
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Disagree. I ran Shure V15vmr and V15vxmr at 1.15g which was the optimum in both an Eminent Technology ET2 and Dynavector 501. That is with the stabiliser brush removed. Both of these arms had eddy current damping in the horizontal plane. More important was capacitive loading - the recommended loading being 250-300pf. Under 250 bright, over 300 lowers the hf response. Can't see how resistive loading will have any impact on a MM unless your preamp has some sort of resonance at 47k/250pf that you needed to obviate. Unfortunately the Shure V15's sounded horrible in many other arms I tried, including Naim Aro, various SME's, Alphason and a few others I can't remember.
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@mijostyn : Electrically this's the FR response loaded at 22k:
the problem with 22khz that no matters if you load it with 800pf the HF down at around 10khz.
Loading it at 47k and 250pf improves but not what we could want:
Now if you loaded at 75khz + 100pf then improves a lot:
I usually load the MM/MI types at 100k and if you or other gentlemans read the long MM thread ( where I advised touse that kind of load) several audiophiles said are/were satisfied and better than 47k.
The cartridge DC resistance is a number I read somewhere ,maybe can be a little higher and if it's that way the better response.
R.
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I'm with Raul. I usually load both MMs and high output MIs at 100K ohms. I keep capacitance to a minimum (about 100pF or certainly no more than 200pF) in both cases. However, I know that some do prefer a resistive load lower than the standard 47K ohms. To be honest, I haven't looked into the rationale for that. |
@mijostyn : The Stanton of those times shows 1,800 ohm Audio Technica around 2,500 ohms, latest Stanton 981 around 900 ohms, Shure 2,500 or 3,000 seems ok.
Now those links showed electrically FR response numbers and what you like is a different matters. It’s almost absolutely weird/rare that you bougth the resistors with out check " numbers " that usually you are in love with numbers. @lewm you are just rigth and those hat goes lower than 47k ( at least 47k. ) have problems with ears and/or system or both , somewhere down there. I tested 150+ cartridges ( including 3-4 Shure's and at least one with Jico SAS stylus. ) and all one like 100k with low capacitance, no matters what and for me is good that some ONE as you confirm it by first hand experiences.
R. |
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Your recommendations on loaiding and capacitance are garbage. According to independent measurements of the Shure V15vmr in High Fidelity Magazine in 1984 ( unfortunately I can't post pictures ) the frequency response at the loading AS RECOMMENDED BY SHURE 47k and 250pf the response was flat to 15k. See middle of page 41 in the link below. I very much doubt whether either of you has actually ever heard the Shure in your own system, because loading at 100k will generate a large high frequency peak. My own experience having owned both the V15vmr and V15vxmr from new, with a variety of phono stages is the SHURES RECOMMENDED LOADING OF 47K and 250pf is the most accurate response.
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I made no recommendation at all, particularly with respect to loading the Shure. I’ve only related my own experience with loading MM (particularly the Grace Ruby) and high output MI cartridges other than the Shure, in much more recent years. A reader can take it or leave it. When I did own a V15 (probably the III version, and surely in the 70s or early 80s), I’m quite sure I loaded it conventionally, and it nevertheless did not engage my long term admiration. I remember it as dry and lifeless. As I recall your saying further up the thread, you were not a fan, either. Mijo has a later version of the V15 with an aftermarket stylus, so his cartridge may exhibit very different character from mine. |
@rauliruegas Right now the Soundsmith is on the tonearm and there is no harshness at all. Thanx for the link. |
@dover I have no way of knowing what the capacitance of my cable is. Is there a way to measure it? |
If you have a good multimeter, just set it on capacitance and then place one lead on the hot and one on the ground on the connector, OR if balanced IC, then place one lead on the plus phase output (pin2) and the other lead on the negative phase output (pin3) of the XLR. The other end of the cable should be disconnected. You need a meter that reads at least down to 50pF. My Fluke 87V can do it, I think. In balanced, the reading from positive to ground (pin1) will be/should be equal to the reading from negative to ground. The net reading from pos to neg will be one half of either. |
