Do it. I had already owned the entry-level Ortofon Quintet Blue m/c cartridge that came with the now-extant E.A.T. C-Major turntable I'd bought. Those sell new for $500 and I noticed how much "richer" in many ways that it sounded over my various moving magnet cartridges I owned. I now firmly believe that Audio Technica is offering us REALLY good cartridges for the money. I'd bet that AT-OC9XEB is as good if not better than the Ortofon Quintet Blue.
FWW, about 10 months back I got a $1,200 Hana ML cartridge (for $1,050) and being honest it wasn't that much better. I had an accident with it and ended up getting a replacement at "significant discount", and when I got the replacement that's when I really understood just how much more important alignment is with a microline cartridge than those nude elliptical ones. What a difference it is to have that new Hana ML running right! WOW. Yes, very different than a nude elliptical stylus.
Now having that success, I wanted to try another moving coil cartridge on my other, older turntable, the Micro Seiki-built direct drive Luxman PD-121U. I had never heard a Shibata stylus but couldn't afford another Hana. Oddly, Hana charges more for their microline carts and less for their Shibata, while Audio Technica is the opposite. I bought an Audio Technica AT33Sa. I actually liked it better than the Hana ML originally, though with precise alignment the Hana ML really is more detailed and gets better mid-range and bass.
When I was putting the dust cover back on my PD-121U, I accidentally hit the end of its SME 3009R tonearm and sent the AT33Sa's boron cantilever & Shibata stylus flying into the mat on the platter. Gone in an instant. Audio Technica wanted $569 to "repair" it, but I know they just toss it and send a new one. There's a nice guy out in the Sacremento CA area, Andy Kim of Needle Clinic, who will fix it with his boron cantilever and microline stylus, for about $100 less so I sent it to him. He did a nice job but there must have been deeper damage than just a broken-off stylus because the output seemed to be less than half of the 0.4mV that it was when new. I sent him an e-mail about it, and he called me minutes later. Andy Kim said he checked it before shipping and knew it was down around 0.18mV, but thought it might have been like that originally. Nope. He gets it back tomorrow and we'll go from there.
