What Cart. for a Infinity Black widow

I use an SME sourced Oracle 345 arm and a Micro Seiki 1500 with vacuum platter and air bearing, a Linn Sondek, a Technics SP 10MK-11 and MK-111 and Teac TN-400 pro TT with magnafloat platter. I have various tonearms including a Linn, a Grace 707, Fidelity Research FR-64, and Signet. I use a Counterpoint SA-9 phono stage with slight mods by Mike Elliot. I also have an use an NEW phono stage and Counterpoint SA-3 preamp with phono. I also have in my system at this time an NAD S100 preamp which I have not tried with my TT yet. My speakers are Chario Academy 111Jrs. My amp is a Krell FPB 600. I have also used Fourier OTLs and Audio Research CL 120's and even have a pair of Audionics CC-2's that I keep for back-ups that sound really good.
I am sure you can find fault with my system or my ears. But, I have had almost every brand of audio equipment in my system worth mentioning because I have many friends in the audio business, I am in the audio business and can try almost anything I want and I have been around for a lot longer than I care to mention and have seen and heard a lot. So, I don't care if the Absolute Sound says about the Shure cartridge I prefer to listen for myself.
I don't think the Shure cartridge is bad, it is great for what it is and I don't think the Carnegie is great, I know there are better MCs out there. As I expressed earlier the Carnegie is an old cartridge but I think, as well as most of my friends who have heard it, that it sounds better than the Shure in my system.
I would love for the Shure to be the best there is. I am a Shure dealer and you would be surprised at what I can get them for. But it juat ain't so.

Hey Gang. Any of you remember the sonus blue mounted in the blackwidow or a mayware? Wowza!Set up on an Linn lp-12,It Magic, the airiest and most open sounding MM this guy ever has ever heard[to this very day].Haven't heard anything since that would float instruments or voices on their own cushion of air the way the Blue could! Unfortunately, the styli was so compliant, none of them lasted more than 6 months [even in the Widow.] I remember the guys with sme's and bruer's getting about 50 hours playing time before experiencing the dreaded stylus fatigue.I would really love to hear one today and compare it with the grado reference or the latest sure.At the time, the v15 type 3,or the grado signatures weren't even remotely close to the magic of the sonus blue.

Rwwear, you have fabulous equipment, and I'm sure there's nothing wrong with your ears. I never said or wrote that the Shure is the most detailed, or the most dynamic and all those audiophile goodies that we are all trained to revere. But in terms of neutrality, I will stand by it, as so many others - professional reviewers included - have done. Also, it is pretty good at all that audiophile stuff. But we are trained to look for ever-finer detail and so forth and eventually lose sight of the music. For those who want to look beyond the obvious audiophile obssessions to something difficult to describe, the essence of music, there are components which do it quietly, like the Shure. Do not assume those who follow the Shure path do so based on reviews. In fact the opposite is true, as the Shure has been dissed in the press ever since the first mega-buck MCs appeared - this is the current dogma, we are trained to look elsewhere: Shure afficionados listen for themselves, against prevailing opinion. My mention of TAS (which after years of damning it with faint praise is just rediscovering this gem - due more to a personal audio journey, a changing outlook) is to point out that people with very expensive systems and access to all kinds of audio goodies, just like yourself, choose the Shure. Different strokes for different folks, but the Shure cannot be dismissed as lightly as you do. The Shure camp is listening for different things than you are, evidently: a matter of personal philosophy. As I wrote before to be more constructive: is your Carnegie (which is also used by a member of TAS) a high-compliance cartridge, and if this so, which implies that the better timing I (and many others) hear in MMs as oppposed to MCs is due to their high compliance, is it perhaps time to start building high-compliance MCs again and so further the art? Isn't that what such a forum is for? And Ecclectique, where can I get a Sonus, as I am increasingly interested in MMs of any sort? And Bro57, how's your Rega doing?

I will listen to the V15 again and keep one in my system. As for my equipment, I mentioned it only because of Dopo or Doper or whatever his name is wanted to imply that it was inferior, to which it is compared to some stuff out there. But it is very musical to most.

Hi. The name is Dave Pogue, but that was taken here at Audiogon, so I'm stuck with initials. Haven't you changed the frame of reference here. Rwwear? I thought the comparison was simply between a new top-line Shure (which you called "mechanical") and an old Carnegie. And the original thread, way back when, was to help a guy choose a cart for his Black Widow. Certainly there are better carts out there, but for this particular application, I still think the Shure, for $200, has a hell of a lot to offer.