Cartridge help?

[royphil345]

Excellent suggestions from JRA...

Some people think if you're not running the same turntable and cartridge they own, you're missing out on "audiophile bliss". I'm not even sure how some people hear these subtleties while running a cartridge that's mediocre at best... Those old Garrards will play music for sure. I imagine it only slams the needle down on the record if you hit the auto button and ask it to? The damped dynamic stabilizer brush on the Shure M97xE will gently lower the stylus into the groove, even if you drop the tonearm from several inches up. Might be a good match if you like using the auto function.

I like the tonal balance of the Shure M97xE in the lower price-range. The output isn't the strongest. The Audio Technica AT-95E is a fantastic bargain and I've been hearing great things about the AT-120E as well. Many people seem to prefer it over the more expensive and higher compliance AT-440MLa.

The Dual 1229 and Garrard SL-95B are both idler drive "stackers" with the primitave dry main bearings and mechanical automatic tonearms. The automatic functions work exactly the same way. They're both known to be pretty musical sounding tables, although not the last word in resolution or rumble specs. I would sure love to hear WHY one would be INFINITELY better than the other... to the point where one's worth purchasing and the other should be thrown out??? No reasons given for such a bold statement... as usual...

The tonearm on the Garrard is not wooden (someone who only saw a photo of it might think so), so I'd have to imagine anything else a certain person claimed to know about it was pure fantasy too... Why would a person actually go through the trouble of inventing things to bash someone's gear and then recommend something that very honestly is so similar it might as well be the same table?