On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 09:55:14 -0400, "Shrivel"
wrote in
:

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.

This is pretty normal with a line-contact stylus... they contact
significantly more groove area, so tend to pick up more dust & dirt
(they're also quite a bit smaller than the average 0.3 mil
elliptical... in the case of the 440ML, 0.12 mil).

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 definitely has a hump in upper treble (I measured it)... something
like between 5KHz and 10KHz, if I remember right.

Neutrality is better of course, but I personally prefer a tipped-up
treble (sort of enhances the sense of detail) than the "warm" tipped
up midbass of Stantons, which sounds really unnatural to my ears.

It's dead quiet in terms of background noise. You'd
probably have to spend 3 times as much to get significantly better sound.

Agreed... maybe even 5 times as much. Detail retrieval is really
remarkable, in my opinion... it's a very "fast" cartridge and I've
never noticed any sibilance, even with LP's that just brought the
M97xE to its figurative knees. Audio-Technica really has something
going with this cart at the price they're selling it, and I've noticed
it just keeps getting more & more popular and talked/raved about on
vinyl-related forums recently -- IMHO for good reason.