If you've spent much time playing with Shure and Stanton (and Pickering)
cartridges, you've probably figured out that there actually aren't many
variations in the basic structures of the styli. The Stanton and modern
Pickering styli all share the same diameter cylindrical shank housing, the
difference being only in the plastic bits that are molded onto the front.
With these styli, the plastic bits do serve the purpose of aligning the
stylus assembly and keeping it from rotating when inserted into the
cartridge body. Aside from that, just about any stylus assembly can be put
into any body. I have often swapped styli from the "proper" model for a
given body model and replaced it with whatever fits or whatever I can make
fit by cutting away the necessary plastic bits so that the shank housing
fully inserts into the body. The results are quite audibly satisfactory, if
not fully cosmetically pleasing. The reason this works is that regardless
of what model they call the thing, the bodies are all essentially the same
structure internally, made of four coils wound on four ferrous pole pieces.
Although there are a few variations in coil inductance and number of turns
among the models, this has very little to do with the performance in
actuality. Stick a stylus assembly inside this structure and you have a
magnetic (dynamic) phono pickup. The performance variations among the
models are almost exclusively a property of the stylus assembly and have
almost nothing to do with the cartridge body. So you can make a Stanton
681EEE out of any Pickering by simply plugging in a D6800EEE stylus assembly
into the Pickering.
Likewise, Shure made about three sizes of square stylus shank housings
that covered the whole range of their models. You can make an M91ED out of
an M75 by just replacing the stylus assembly. And vice versa. If I
remember, you don't even have to do any surgery to the plastic parts. Shure
was aware that their ruse had been found out by the time their V15-II and
later series came out, so they changed (reduced) the size of the shank
housing on this series so that the styli didn't fit their earlier model
bodies. This forced the customer to shell out the BIG cash to buy the
complete cartridge. And I believe that the very earliest models such as the
M3 and M7 from the late 1950s had bigger shanks than the M91, M44, and
similar models from the 1960s, so those parts cannot be interchanged. Shure
was considerably more conniving in creating a very wide range of molded
plastic front ends on their styli and cartridge bodies in an attempt to keep
you from interchanging them. But if you don't mind getting out the ol'
X-axto knife and cutting away the interfering bits, you can effectively
replace quite a number of styli with different models.
The point here is that since Stanton and Shure are not making
replacement styli for most of their models anymore, you can usually make do
with a similar new one or NOS one that you may be able to still find. Yes,
there are some fairly good replacement styli available from third parties,
but REALLY good ones are still hard to find in my experience and repurposing
NOS originals sometimes works better. My main gripe at this time is the
difficulty in finding line contact (LC) or MicroRidge (MR) styli. I know
that there is one custom supplier who sells retipped Shures for several
hundred dollars, but I'm just too cheap to fork out that much cash. I think
Audio-Technica still makes new LC type styli, and the A-T Shibata cart
models have always been excellent.
Greg Bogantz
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron L" <lherault at bu.edu>
To: "'Antique Phonograph List'" <phono-l at oldcrank.org>
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 1:49 PM
Subject: RE: [Phono-L] Shellac records and damage from steel needles
>I know the cartridge is obsolete (if by that you mean, old). I bought it
>in
> 1974. It is on the downstairs turntable I now use only for 78s. If I'd
> gotten a 500 series or a 6800 series, I could still get styli easy. After
> I'd had the retip done I did find a source for new ones in Japan but the
> retip turned out to be less expensive.
>
> Ron L
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: phono-l-bounces at oldcrank.org [mailto:phono-l-bounces at oldcrank.org]
> On
> Behalf Of Rich
> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 12:56 PM
> To: Antique Phonograph List
> Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Shellac records and damage from steel needles
>
> Your problem might be that the cartridge is obsolete. Try the link to
> the current catalog.
>
> https://system.netsuite.com/core/media/media.nl?id=11886&c=ACCT106601&h=ea8e
> b7f71c2eceb07b71&_xt=.pdf&ck=0SLNvAETASXUXWIJ&vid=0SLNvAETAVXUXRX-&cktime=40
> 1&cart=4827670
>
> Ron L wrote:
>> AFAIK, Stanton does not supply new styli for the 6000 series cart. I'd
> have
>> gotten a 6027 if I could but as it turned out I got it retipped with a
> nice
>> 3 mil diamond which works better anyway.
>>
>> Ron
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