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.
The stylus is more than a bit worn out!
With that level of damage I suspect there’s a chance the cart is also damaged and I’m going for a cheap AT for now.
Oh, yikes. Yeah, that stylus is a hazard to your records. If you’re at all worried about the cart, it’s probably best to write that off, too.