Shure V-15 Type III
A cartridge that chased the stylus resonance out past 23,000 Hz - and rebuilt its whole body to keep the response flat once it got there.
Overview
The number that defines the V-15 Type III is 23,000. In developing the cartridge, Shure's engineers moved the stylus resonance out to 23 kHz, well above the audible spectrum, as the primary means of improving high-frequency trackability. That one decision forced everything else. Raising the resonance that far would have produced a considerable droop in the frequency response curve if the cartridge body of the V-15 Type II had been retained. Shure's own account of the design, published in Audio (August 1973, p.22), is blunt about it: it was necessary to design a completely new cartridge body structure to match the higher trackability stylus.
That new body is the part collectors tend to overlook. The Type III's cartridge structure has an assembly of precise miniature laminations. It's the same principle as the laminations in an electrical transformer, reducing electrical losses. Combined with several other design features, the laminations let Shure provide an electrical frequency response that almost perfectly complements the mechanical response of the stylus, so the overall result is essentially flat. The payoff came in two parts at once: a significant improvement in high-frequency trackability over the Type II and a better frequency response curve. That is not the usual trade. Ordinarily you buy trackability with a little response droop, which is exactly what Shure accepted in the V-15 Type II when it moved that model's resonance to 20 kHz.
Shure documented the lineage openly. The original V-15 had difficulty tracking material in the 15 kHz region. The Type II addressed that by relocating the mechanical resonance to 20 kHz and idealizing the other parameters, accepting a small response droop in exchange for vastly improved trackability. The Type III was the attempt to have both, and the laminations were how Shure got there.
The tracking force is the other number that separates this cartridge from its era's four-channel competition. Shure stated plainly that the V-15 Type III will track most present-day records at ¾ gram. Cartridges sold for operation with the CD-4 system were specified at two grams. Shure's position, laid out in a letter from vice president James H. Kogen published in Audio (November 1973, p.10), was that the lower tracking force was an extremely important feature of a top-quality stereo cartridge. Extensive life tests backed this up, showing that diamond tip life increases exponentially as tracking force decreases, so long as the cartridge tracks properly. The company said it could not countenance a change in the Type III's design that would require a higher tracking force. That is a manufacturer's argument, not an independent verdict.
Kogen's letter is explicit that the Type III was optimized to satisfy the requirements of the standard stereo disc, at a time when the CD-4 catalog ran to fewer than 30 discs against millions of standard stereo records. Shure's stated position was that it would provide the best quality cartridge for all record formats produced and would endeavor to satisfy CD-4 requirements, but not that a single cartridge could be the ultimate solution for every system. Buyers who expected the Type III to be a four-channel answer were reading against the grain of the company's own documentation.
Period writing treated the cartridge as a reference point rather than a component under test.
Setup is where the Type III gets fussy. A German-language test of the Micro MA-505 tonearm noted that the arm had been mounted so that the somewhat large vertical tracking angle of the Shure V 15 III was brought closer to the ideal 20 degrees. So the vertical angle on this cartridge is a real setup variable. The same test measured arm/cartridge resonance in the 5.5 to 6 Hz region across three combinations, and found the resonance less damped on an SME arm than on the Micro.
Beyond that, the fact sheet supplies nothing on current parts availability or pricing, and this page will not guess at it.
The body is the durable part. The stylus is the consumable, and it is the thing to inspect before money changes hands.
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