Listener57, any "five-minute" glass-epoxy resin will do, but usually the really cheap stuff need not apply. Try to buy something of better quality. And be careful, as some of this stuff is black and some is clear when it cures. I buy the stuff which comes in a double syringe (though sometimes this is cheap and messy; the tubes are cleaner in the long run), which is convenient as it gives you perfect mix - again buy expensive here too. Pick the stuff you like. It all takes 24 hours to cure completely. I like the glass-epoxy because it is substantial unlike Crazy Glue which tends to dissolve plastic and paint and so does fuse the components. The epoxy bridges the gap at the four points (in any MM) in little blobs which turn to glass, thus effectively making the MM a single unit. The blobs are easy to break off with a little screwdriver when the time comes for a new stylus. This makes a huge difference, cleaning up the highs and focusing everything.
Rwwear, I actually haven't heard of the Walcot MMs, but I have a great respect for NOS stuff, as I recently acquired a NOS Supex which is actually superb (livelier than most of the new stuff and with the usual MC strengths), and a NOS Acutex 320 with Shibata stylus that was a true high-end performer which matched the legendary Purpleheart Sapphire in the highs and lows, with a touch of recessed midrange, but at that price, who cares...and it's reproduction of strings (more liquid than water!) was perhaps the best I've ever heard, at least in "liquid" terms. If you have any more, I'd be interested. As to the Shure V15, it was called the "V" apparently because it was designed with the SME V in mind, it's just that people don't normally pair an MM with such an expensive tonearm. I've personally never heard the Shure in a SME, but one of the reviewers at TAS does use it this way. If you do try this, then please report on your findings, at least to me, as I would like to know how it sounds here. The Shure seems to prefer medium-mass over low-mass tonearms, so those Shure engineers do know what they are doing, if they had the SME V in mind. But it really opens up in medium mass unipivots (bearing in mind I haven't heard it in a SME). Keep us posted, and listen to those violins and timing. It's like the imaging thing: you have to get "educated" before you can actually hear the imaging in a stereo, as your mind has not learned to expect this/hear it when a novice. The timing of MMs is like this too: the Shure showed me the way here, but slowly and over time, showing me complex timing relationships I wasn't really aware existed until the violins drew my attention. And once I heard this, I knew it was more important to the music than all those things MCs are traditionally strong at. Like so many reviewers write when reviewing the Shure, "it just sounds right." But they usually attribute this rightness to the tonality, which is only half the story.
