Shure M-75
A cartridge family that lived in the shadow of the V-15, and by one reviewer's ear got uncomfortably close to it anyway.
Overview
The M-75 comes with a family of interchangeable styli, so owners can move between record types without swapping the body. The N75E is a 0.2 x 0.7-mil elliptical, priced at $20 in period advertising. The N75-3 is a 2.5-mil stylus at $9, intended for 78-rpm shellac. That 2.5-mil tip also appears in Shure's recommendations for the V15 Type II, so a fair amount of the flagship's design carried over. HiFi/Stereo (July 1967, p.57) went further. It reported that Shure had transplanted the essence of the V15 Type II into the M75 with such success that the two were essentially indistinguishable except on records with high-level, high-frequency transients. The reviewer singled out harpsichord and bells as the giveaway material.
That's a big claim for a cartridge that wasn't the flagship, and it needs some skepticism. The M75 was never the V-15, and Shure never marketed it as such. But a period reviewer reached for the comparison at all.
The M-75 line also included conical-stylus variants. The 75-6S, described in one collection survey, uses a conical tip with a compliance at the low end of medium - just barely inside the medium range, in that source's phrasing. A "6" in the suffix indicates a 0.6-thou stylus radius, which works out to 15 micrometers. The 75-6S is described as long-established and something of a golden oldy. The intent was to offer M75 trackability at a lower price point by way of a cheaper stylus, aimed at less demanding applications and popular turntables. Cartridge weight is given as 5 grams, manufacture quality is called good, and the specified tracking pressure was noted in the same source.
The M-75's reputation in the collector market is modest. It doesn't command the prices of the V-15 family, and it doesn't have the cult following of some of Shure's later DJ-oriented cartridges. What it has is availability, parts support through the N75 stylus line, and a body that shows up regularly on used turntables. For someone restoring a period deck, particularly a European semi-automatic like the Braun, the M-75 is often the correct answer. It isn't the best cartridge Shure ever made, but it's the one that was supposed to be there.
Audio (August 1977, p.15) ran a Shure lineup piece that placed the M95ED as second only to the V-15 Type III in stereo reproduction, with a thinner uninterrupted pole piece minimizing magnetic losses and a 20 to 20,000 Hz response. The M-75 doesn't appear in that particular roundup, which is a reminder that by the late 1970s Shure's marketing attention had moved upmarket. The M-75 was already the established workhorse by then, not the headline.
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