I have a Dual/AT440 combo and am relatively pleased.

The only criticism of the AT440 I have is that it seems to have an annoying
ability to get small dirt/dust particles wedged behind the tip of the
stylus. This happens once every few months and I generally keep my
collection clean and I always use a Discwasher brush before every playing.

As far as sound quality, it sounds excellent. As Moi said, the AT440 is
pretty bright, but that's a good match for my laid-back system and the bass
extension is great. It's dead quiet in terms of background noise. You'd
probably have to spend 3 times as much to get significantly better sound. I
haven't used the other 2 cartridges, so I can't compare to them.

BTM


"Allan Tremblay" wrote in message
om...
I just got a Dual 1216 turntable at the flea market this weekend, in
good working condition. It has a Shure M91ED cartridge, and I bought a
new but cheap imitation stylus which seems to work fine so far. I'm
having a great time rediscovering my LP collection, but I'm thinking
about getting a better quality cartridge and starting building a
collection of brand new records, mainly jazz stuff (Blue Note offers a
lot of reasonably priced LP reissues).

I looked around on the web and newsgroup, and am considering Shure,
Audio-Technica and maybe Grado. I looked at Garage-a-Records, and
picked those three for comparison purpose. They're all slightly below
a 100$ and seem to be generally well regarded:

Shure M97xE
Audio-Technica AT440ML
Grado Silver

I'd like to read opinions on these from people who have actually used
them. Opinions on cheaper but good value cartridges are welcomed, too.
I have a modest set-up, so I'm not considering high-end equipment.

Thanks everybody!