Shure shutting down phono division

[lovinthehd]

Guess the vinyl sales aren't strong enough anymore for them....https://www.shure.co.uk/company/press/2018/phono-statement#__prclt=6mZ9r38o

 

[j_garcia]

The millennials have moved on to the next cool or "anti-cool" thing.

 

[TLS Guy]

This is sad news. Shure have been my go to cartridge company for nearly 50 years now. In my view they have made the best cartridges ever. Their current ones offer easily the best value for money.

I guess vinyl is not such an economic success it is talked up to be, which is not surprising.

 

[lovinthehd]

My first two carts were Shures (an M91 then V15 back in the 70s), always liked them, even tho I did experiment a bit with several other brands and didn't find the huge differences some claim, maybe it was just Shure setting the bar to begin with. I doubt I'll wear out my M97 that I'm using now....but thinking of a spare just in case LOL.

 

[sterling shoote]

What cartridge comes with most new turntables sold today? It's the Ortofon Red MM. When this cartridge is replaced, it's not replaced with a Shure, which is considered on par with the Ortofon. That friends is the reason for Shure making this announcement. Interestingly enough, I have two V15V-MR's, one with original stylus and another without stylus. My next purchase will be a JICO SAS/R stylus, once they catch up with market demand, and I should be back in business to enjoy vinyl from a Sony PS-4750 and a yet to be purchased Technics SL-1210GR I've been saving for to get the most from the V15V-MR. My sentiment on this matter mirrors TLS, my experiments tell me the V15V-MR is the cartridge for a vinyl lover interested in getting all the music there is to squeeze out of the groove. At any rate, what a year, first OPPO and now Shure stopping production of products which have a loyal market but apparently not large enough for mass production to make the product profitable.

 

[Swerd]

My first cartridge was also a Shure M91 in 1972. It cost $19 and came with the $78 AR turntable I bought – $97 for the package.

Even though I don't need a new cartridge, it might be the right time to buy a spare M97 before they're gone.

 

[Swerd]

… what a year, first OPPO and now Shure stopping production of products which have a loyal market but apparently not large enough for mass production to make the product profitable.

Blame it on those disruptive millennials . If you can't run it from a smart phone, they aren't interested .

 

[j_garcia]

Blame it on those disruptive millennials . If you can't run it from a smart phone, they aren't interested .

Actually, millennials were the reason there was an uptick because it was what the cool kids were doing because it was not mainstream. Truth is, that probably hurt the cause more than it helped.

 

[lovinthehd]

What cartridge comes with most new turntables sold today? It's the Ortofon Red MM. When this cartridge is replaced, it's not replaced with a Shure, which is considered on par with the Ortofon. That friends is the reason for Shure making this announcement. Interestingly enough, I have two V15V-MR's, one with original stylus and another without stylus. My next purchase will be a JICO SAS/R stylus, once they catch up with market demand, and I should be back in business to enjoy vinyl from a Sony PS-4750 and a yet to be purchased Technics SL-1210GR I've been saving for to get the most from the V15V-MR. My sentiment on this matter mirrors TLS, my experiments tell me the V15V-MR is the cartridge for a vinyl lover interested in getting all the music there is to squeeze out of the groove. At any rate, what a year, first OPPO and now Shure stopping production of products which have a loyal market but apparently not large enough for mass production to make the product profitable.

Ortofon Shmortofon. They may be a better competitor in the cartridge market tho, especially their color tiers of styli replacement seems to get some excitement going (ala Grado it seems). That's one brand I haven't tried, tho.

 

[panteragstk]

Blame it on those disruptive millennials . If you can't run it from a smart phone, they aren't interested .

Hey now, I'm "technically" a millennial, but apparently since I'm an "old" millennial we got our own special sub group that I can't seem to find...

Anyway, it's really those darn baby boomers running these companies into the ground...

 

[Swerd]

Actually, millennials were the reason there was an uptick because it was what the cool kids were doing because it was not mainstream. Truth is, that probably hurt the cause more than it helped.

I think there's some truth in what both of us said. It was millennials who were said to be interested in turntables and vinyl records because they were vintage. I believe there was plenty of lip service paid to this idea, especially the vintage part, but not enough money was spent to make it a reality. Having a turntable also required having a receiver or preamp/amp. Those same people who liked the vintage fashion found it to conflict with their desire of avoiding the bulkiness of older audio electronic gear.

All this talk has made me just a little nostalgic. I do not collect turntables or cartridges, it really is 50-year-old technology. However, I do still own and occasionally use that AR turntable I mentioned above. When my son was teen aged, he destroyed the cantilever on the original Shure M91 cartridge. I replaced it with a Japanese-made Sumiko Oyster. It was fairly inexpensive in the late 90s (about $60), and more importantly, it was available when I looked in a nearby (now long gone) shop. I never did know if it made an audible difference or not compared to the old Shure M91.

When I first bought that rig, I was out of college for about 2 years at the time, and my entire experience with turntables & cartridges was what I saw while in school. Everyone seemed to have either a Garrard or Dual turntable, and the Shure, Pickering, or Stanton cartridge that came with them. There were other brands of turntables (if I encountered any I don't remember it), but I never saw other makes of cartridges. No one I knew played the game of switching cartridges and listening for differences. It was just too difficult to switch them.

Years later, during the so-called vinyl revival, I was amazed to see the large number of cartridge makes available on-line. How can a fading technology have so many cartridge makers? Who buys this stuff? I wonder who has ever switched out cartridges, and who kept using what originally came with their turntables? I’ve switched only once, and that was out of necessity. I could be wrong, a few of us may very well have done this. TLS Guy probably can lead that charge. But is it common or uncommon?

 

[3db]

I had a Shure on my old RadioShack turntable and it was nothing special, probably their entry level cartridge. The TT was crap too and I"ll never buy a floating plinth TT again. I stopped using it because the distortion was so bad towards the inner grooves that I was afraid, I was ruining my record collection. Now I own a Project Xpression III that comes with a Shmortofon Red. I really do like the sound its able to pull out of the grooves.

Vinyl will continue to grow steadily thanks to the demise of the CD.

 

[Swerd]

I had a Shure on my old RadioShack turntable and it was nothing special, probably their entry level cartridge.

Like most turntables, it came with an entry level cartridge. Shure M91–M95 cartridges always had excellent reputations and were probably quite good. But most people who owned them never compared them to anything else. Did you listen to different cartridges before you bought the RadioShack tt?

Now I own a Project Xpression III that comes with a Shmortofon Red. I really do like the sound its able to pull out of the grooves.

Again, did you listen to other cartridges before you got the Shmortofon? I doubt if the Red is an entry level cartridge ($100 US?), but I don't know what Shmortofon models are the entry level models.

 

[slipperybidness]

M97xE on my Technics SL1210
Ortofon 2M Red on my Pro-Ject Debut carbon

Never compared them side by side, never swapped the carts either. I do tend to prefer the SL1210.

 

[3db]

Like most turntables, it came with an entry level cartridge. Shure M91–M95 cartridges always had excellent reputations and were probably quite good. But most people who owned them never compared them to anything else. Did you listen to different cartridges before you bought the RadioShack tt?
Again, did you listen to other cartridges before you got the Shmortofon? I doubt if the Red is an entry level cartridge ($100 US?), but I don't know what Shmortofon models are the entry level models.

The turntable was crap and it probably didn't help the cartridge much. I didn't say the cartridge was bad. I said it wasnt special. Ortofon's entry level cartridge is (was) the OM-10 which I had and upgraded to the 2M Red . I like the 2M red better because it didnt reproduce the record noise as much as the OM-10. I heard a Grado on my friend's system and I liked it too. Its difficult to compare the cartridges with the exception of the (OM10 and the 2M Red upgrade) that Ive heard because they were on different systems in different acoustic environments.

 

[Mikado463]

as we wax poetically about Shure's demise, bottom line is they were passed by some time ago. their day has come and gone.........

 

[yepimonfire]

Blame it on those disruptive millennials . If you can't run it from a smart phone, they aren't interested .

I'm a millennial, and have no interest in vinyl because digital is obviously superior in every way. I suppose if I had an old collection I might be more interested, but there isn't much point in buying new albums on vinyl. Spotify premium at 320kbps is transparent, and if I really needed better quality, several companies like onkyo music offer FLAC downloads.

Sent from my LM-X210(G) using Tapatalk

 

[slipperybidness]

I'm a millennial, and have no interest in vinyl because digital is obviously superior in every way. I suppose if I had an old collection I might be more interested, but there isn't much point in buying new albums on vinyl. Spotify premium at 320kbps is transparent, and if I really needed better quality, several companies like onkyo music offer FLAC downloads.

Sent from my LM-X210(G) using Tapatalk

I got into vinyl back in the days when it had pretty much been abandoned, and CDs were king.

I could visit the local record shop and pick up 2 or 3 used vinyl for the cost of a single new CD! That allowed me to experience more new music than I could on CD, with my small college kid budget. I have a few records that I payed less than $10 for, now worth $50+.

 

[Swerd]

Thanks everyone for your replies. My reason for asking about whether anyone has ever directly compared the sounds of different phono pickup cartridges goes back to the earliest days (as a college freshman in 1966) of my interest in audio.

Someone had told me the most critical steps in audio playback occurred where energy was transformed (transduced) from mechanical-to-electronic (phono pickup, tape head, or microphone) or from electronic-to-mechanical (speakers). Most losses in sound quality occurred at those transduction steps. If you searched and spent wisely, focusing on those two steps, you could get a good sounding system. Less critical, but not unimportant, were the in between steps where electronic energy was amplified or modified but not transduced into a different form of energy.

It sounded reasonable to me at the time, and still does today. Once you had 2 pairs of different speakers in the same room, it was fairly easy to compare the sounds of different speakers. I and many others certainly did a lot of that. However it was never easy to directly compare the sounds of different phono pickups. It required changing the pickups, re-balancing the tone arm, and re-adjusting the tracking before you could listen. I didn't know anyone who bothered to do that. In addition, because most turntables sold in the US were bundled with an entry level pickup, few people were ever encouraged to try listening to different pickups before they bought anything.

As a result, I always wondered whether that old advice about the critical steps in audio playback was actually true.

 

[slipperybidness]

Thanks everyone for your replies. My reason for asking about whether anyone has ever directly compared the sounds of different phono pickup cartridges goes back to the earliest days (as a college freshman in 1966) of my interest in audio.

Someone had told me the most critical steps in audio playback occurred where energy was transformed from mechanical-to-electronic (phono pickup) or from electronic-to-mechanical (speakers). Most losses in sound quality occurred at those transformation steps. If you searched and spent wisely, focusing on those two steps, you could get a good sounding system. Less critical, but not unimportant, were the in between steps where electronic energy was amplified or modified but not transformed into a different form of energy.

It sounded reasonable to me at the time, and still does today. Once you had 2 pairs of different speakers in the same room, it was fairly easy to compare the sounds of different speakers. I and many others certainly did a lot of that. However it was never easy to directly compare the sounds of different phono pickups. It required changing the pickups, re-balancing the tone arm, and re-adjusting the tracking before you could listen. I didn't know anyone who bothered to do that. In addition, because most turntables sold in the US were bundled with an entry level pickup, few people were ever encouraged to try listening to different pickups before they bought anything.

As a result, I always wondered whether that old advice about the critical steps in audio playback was actually true.

Yeah, transducers tend to be the critical step for any electro-mechanical system (not just audio systems)!