shure m97xe ,

its been reviewed to death , this blog is try and get a handle on what is causing the discrepancies in listening tests .
 so far i have read claims of it taking 200 hours to break in ! :-O ,

first up, i thought mine was broken when i first used it , all carts have a break in period while the suspension softens and the tip polishes at the contact points , but this cart is ridiculous , it is worse than a low compliance Moving Coil being broken in on a low mass arm , i am only 10 hours in with this one and it has free'd up a touch with results starting to sound  like music , but its still a long way off what it will be .

setting up
be fastidious , the tip , although mounted on a large bushing, is still a hyper elliptical of .2 x .7 mil , the at95e is a .4 x .7 .
 as the tip is so fine it really matters that its contact edges are as close as possible to being perpendicular to the playing surface , also that the cart is in correct azimuth to the record , i have read reports on many 97's being sent out with badly aligned tips , mine have been fine but if once you have the set up as perfect as you can achieve and you find any major discrepancies in left/right channel output or have audible mistracking then you may have a bad one ,
  during break in you get little hints at what the cart can do , the soundstage may appear bunched up between the speakers and mid forward with little to no bass or top end air and space , slowly it will start to open up , bass will start to even out and deepen , even at 50 hours it will still not be giving its all .
 cartridge loading has been written about with regard to the m97 , i have tried various settings and had little to no real difference in sound so i advise that you ignore the odd results others have found with the m97 in this respect , 250pf 47k is just fine , i.e any modern phono stage will do .

 arm mass ,

this is just the mechanical resistance offered up by the shear weight of the arm as a whole against the cartridge suspension , however any roughness or resistance in the arm bearings and the effective resistance seen by the cart will go up and down  .
 i have a home made arm that is adjustable in mass from 8g - 20g , it makes a tiny difference but far more important is that the arm bearings are in good health and the TT is perfectly level , play around with anti skate , use a blank bit of vinyl and set it so the cart sits still in the middle of the average playing groove , then check by ear with strong vocal recordings with strong central image or even a good mono record , any sibilance in one speaker more than the other then you need to adjust the anti skate , again when its right you will notice . if you have a heavy arm then use the stabilizer brush to save the stylus getting over stressed .

  tracking force ,

the recommended 0.75-1.25 is all well and good but my last m97 couldn't track 1khz at anything less than 1.25g and i actually used 1.3g to stop the sizzle that occurred while it struggled to track said frequency , truth is the tip mass is just too high to reliably track and trace accurately at anything less than 1.25g unless you have a very low mass arm , think around 5g eff arm mass , this is due to the high compliance of 25cu , my denon dl103 is around 10cu , but considering the effective mass of many arms with detachable headshells are up above 8g i doubt shure would have produced a cart that only works with a small number of low mass arms ,

sorry about the low rez image ,
 as you can see from the reflected image on the record surface the ridge or .2mil radius as pretty much spot on , if you can achieve this you will hear it , the m97 has a reputation for a clean smooth top end output , it absolutely has once aligned correctly , its still not anywhere near the old shure nude square shank MR micro ridge types but still a fine stylus for the price .

 there is now an SAS tip for the 97 , SAS or super analogue stylus from japan , it uses a bonded tip that is exquisite , above is the SAS tip on my A&R77 taken at the same distance and magnification as the shure tip above , this gives you an idea of how chunky the shure tip is and also how much potential for improvement a much lower mass set may bring , the cantilever is boron and half the diameter of the shure alloy pipe , the tip is the tiny little fleck at the bottom of the bonding material .

above you can see the boron cantilever plugged into the allow pipe and the long shank diamond on the tip ,  i cant put enough emphasis on what a huge leap the SAS is over the standard item , i will be getting one soon but i must finish the break in of the shure first.
 play as much dynamic material as possible during break in , the larger excursions the stylus has to make will greatly speed it up

14 hours and 28 minutes (yes i have been timing it ;-)  ) , half way through the B52's 'lava' and , hey presto , it was like someone came in and turned the bass and treble level up and moved my speakers apart , i had the same with my last m97 , it seems to change in steps rather than a steady constant improvement , its odd but it has been the case with both 97's i have had ,  Nagaoka carts do the same but once the step change starts it happens all at once , through one side of an lp it goes from small and a bit shrill to open and voluptuous , the 97 gives a bit then stays that way for an lp or three ,
 the description on a certain highly regarded audio site of the 97 as having a very narrow sound stage is in my experience valid for a brand new unbroken cart and is a prime example of a reviewer not doing the job right , any cart i have experienced takes at the very least 20 hours of use after set up is achieved , everything before that which is considered as the 'sound' of a cartridge should be ignored ,
  the M97x-E has a wide expanse of sound , in fact it can be as wide or narrow as the recording allows , its one of the traits that shure fans love , its honesty . rough,dirty and scratched lps are given an easy time as the shure has an odd ability to keep the music to the forefront of the listeners attention whereas an audio technica cart can let noise and defects become too obvious , i guess this is why the shure is preferred by archivists ,  which leads me to a point , so many current record reissues are actually bootlegs of a sort as the original masters are lost or damaged and so CD's or original pressings on vinyl are used to make new master tapes , the shure V15 is often used as the mastering cart , you will likely notice the shure house sound coming from some of these reissues and bootlegs .

after 100 LP's ,
 first off , i changed alignment , the shure provided protractor gets close and may be fine for most shorter 9" arms but was out by 2mm compared to correct lofgren A alignment , once i re set it to the lofgren set up it is far cleaner sounding ,  bass is really quite impressive and deep reaching with free flowing dynamics that work well with the garrard 401 and its astonishing sound , still not quite as good as my denon dl103 , more' but less refined bass, would be a good way to put it , compared to audio technica's at95he it is way better at resolving bass detail , the 95 has cleaner and more forward top end but the shure has an almost liquid mid band with great vocal communication  , if shure had put a low mass nude tip on the 97 it would be the best cartridge under £250 available , it really is ' almost brilliant' , dont take this as the last word as it is still gaining more air and space to the sound with each day it gets played.

i am starting to believe that it may actually need over 100 hours to run in , this could either be a very hard end grain orientated diamond or the type of rubber used for the suspension, or even a combo of the two , much like a stock dl103 , any review of the shure or denon carts you may have read should only be considered as guidance if the carts had 200 hours or so of use before critical listening took place  .
and so to my original reason for this blog , the mixed results from people using this cart may be nothing more than lack of patience and assessment based on the carts sound during break in , if you tried one before and didnt give it a proper chance you may have missed out on something that is one of hi fi's greatest bargains .



more soon