FRED MANTEGHIAN BLOG

When my favorite work lamp (relegated to laundry room duty – harrumph!) bit the dust electrically, I pulled it out of the trash and set it aside as a future project. But last weekend when I was out to replace the Grado Reference Sonata cartridge, a cartridge whose interaction with my VPI Aries turntable motor is legion, at least in my mind, the lamp lent a helping hand. I'm about to embark on a series of blogs about converting vinyl to various forms digital, I couldn't have any hum. Or buzz.

Enter the Shure M97XE cartridge. A third the price of the Grado, still a moving magnet, but so far, incapable of hum (though buzz rears its head on occasions when it is then banished with a ground wire).

The busted lamp was actually nearby as I took the JMW tonearm to the kitchen table for disassembly. The shaft of the tonearm looked like it would fit perfectly into the base of the lamp if the lamps arm was removed, which, in short order, it was.

And it did.

It's much easier to swap a cartridge when you have a third hand, particularly one anchored to a heavy sand filled steel base.

Anyone else have some tips on changing cartridges? Leave me some feedback

Put your hand down Michael and let one of the others have a turn, alright?