Needles

Been out of the vinyl game for a while but I'm getting back in, and curious what cartridges/needles you all use? The ones I have on my turntables are fairly old and weren't great to begin with.

ortofon om5e, was oem with the turntable but it sounds great

Shure M92E. Not audiophile or anything but sounds pretty good for the money (think it retails for $50-60).

My shittier table has an Ortofon OM10(e? don't remember) on it (one of the few aftermarket cartridges I could find that didn't weigh too much for the turntable's lightweight balance/tone arm), which sounds much better than the Audio Technica cart I had before. Audio Technica shit sounds so bad.

i don't fuck w needles, only smoke

i have a pmount table, which audiophiles sneer at for not providing enough options. currently have a cheap ortofon that is in need of replacing. thinking about getting a grado.

Aforementioned M92E can be used w/P-mount

Are Audio-Technica carts really that bad? I've heard good things about the semi-affordable AT120E/T and was considering that since I need new one, and even their cheaper ones I've heard on friends' turntables sounded fine to my ears. Probably will go with Shure M97xE though because I like the little brush thing which I've found in the past does a great job of cleaning dust off your records just by playing them. Even now and then, you just wipe the brush clean which takes 10 seconds.

I've only had experience with two A-Ts and both were really shitty at the high end and would easily sound kind of distorted/fried out on really loud records, while the rest of the range sounded kind of muffled. They might sound better on different receivers.

I've installed a few M97XEs at work - first guy who got one loved it so much he wound up getting 2 other people to buy them from us. If I ever upgrade from the M92E I'll probably go for one of those. One thing to bear in mind is that Shure's cartridges are on the heavy side and if you're replacing a smaller/lighter cartridge sometimes you have to do tricky things with the balancing weight on the tonearm.

Put a m97xe on my technics and I am happy with it. Replaced an old Realistic cart. It's amazing what that brush picks up

Will you be DJing with these? I've found Shure M44Gs to be a good standard.