I’ve just bought a Yamaha YP-D6 turntable. It’s had a hard life, but seems to work ok. I’ll replace the stylus before playing any of my collection. Problem is that it has a Shure RXT-4 cartridge which takes a N97HE stylus. A quick bit of research suggests I’ll be paying well over $200 for even a cheap N97HE clone. This seems a bit risky when I don’t even know if the cartridge is functionally “good”.
I’m not looking for the best possible performance from a turntable - it’s just to be able to play my collection for nostalgia etc.
I think I’m better off replacing the cartridge with something like and audio technica AT-VM95E.
Interested to hear any thoughts, including suggestions for other budget friendly cartridges.
Honestly, AT makes some incredible cartridges.
There are countless “better” options, but they offer diminishing returns considering how spendy they are.
I agree, if you just want decent quality sound at a reasonable price, the AT cartridges are the way to go