Shure V15 Type

Name: Shure V15 Type
Brand: Shure

A cartridge line whose name survives mostly in the fine print of other people's manuals.

Overview

The Shure V15 Type keeps turning up sideways in the archive. It shows up in period advertisements, in test-bench writeups, and most often in the setup notes of turntable reviews, where it was the cartridge mounted on somebody else's arm. The surviving documentation is fragmentary in a specific way. There is plenty of evidence that the V15 Type family existed and was taken seriously by the audio press. There is almost nothing that pins down a single resolved model, a production window, or an original price for "V15 Type" as a standalone name. What follows is what the record supports, hedged accordingly.

The most concrete item in the archive is an advertising placement that ran in several titles in late 1979. It announced a new addition to what Shure called the "Super-Track Plus" family of V15 Type III cartridges. Audio (October 1979, p.43), HiFi-Stereo (October 1979, p.65), and High Fidelity (October 1979, p.121) all carried the same copy. All three describe the headline change the same way: a hyperelliptical stylus tip, pitched as giving audibly greater freedom from distortion. The same ad ties that tip to one of the developments introduced on the V15 Type IV. So the Type III and Type IV were both in the picture at that moment, and Shure was marketing the tip technology down the line rather than up. That is advertising, not independent verification. It is still the clearest statement in the record about what the V15 Type III was and what changed in it.

Earlier in the line's life, the coverage was more enthusiastic and more specific. HiFi-Stereo (February 1968, p.34) ran a placement for the V-15 Type II at $67.50. The copy said the cartridge cost roughly $30 more than what it dismissively called "second-echelon" models, and argued that the premium bought tracking ability at high recording velocities - the kind of cutting level that preserves precise intonation rather than smearing it. An earlier version of the same pitch appeared in HiFi-Stereo (October 1967, p.101) at the same $67.50 figure. That suggests the price held steady across that stretch, though the archive can't confirm how long. By November 1970, HiFi-Stereo (p.104) was quoting Hirsch-Houck Labs on the V-15 Type II Improved. The lab reported that tone-burst response using the Stereo Review SR-12 test record was "perfect up to the highest frequencies" and described the cartridge as unstrained, effortless, and a delight to listen to. That is a third-party verdict relayed through a manufacturer's ad, so it carries the manufacturer's framing. But the measurement claim is attributed to a named testing organization, which is more than most of this family's paper trail offers.

The archive does not have almost everything else. There is no resolved production year for any specific V15 Type variant. There is no confirmed original price beyond the $67.50 Type II figure, and no tracking force, output voltage, compliance figure or frequency response curve. There is no stylus profile beyond the hyperelliptical tip in the 1979 advertising, and no independent measurement of the cartridge by a reviewing publication. The Type II, Type II Improved, Type III, and Type IV are all named in the surviving material, but the archive treats "V15 Type" as an unresolved designation: the family name without a confirmed variant attached. Anyone looking for a definitive spec sheet on one of them will not find it here, and the archive would rather say so than pad the page with numbers it cannot source.

The one piece of practical documentation comes from the other direction: a 2003-era audioXpress phono preamp evaluation in which a Music Hall MMF-2 turntable was fitted with a Shure V15 Type V cartridge. The reviewer notes that the V15 Type V shipped with a 20-page booklet including frequency response and trackability-versus-recording-velocity curves. The cheaper Goldring Elan on the same table did not get that. Two things come out of it. The V15 Type V was still in use as a reference-grade cartridge well into the 2000s, and Shure's documentation for the top of the line was unusually thorough. It does not give the V15 Type V's specifications, and the archive will not guess at them.

For anyone trying to place a V15 Type today, this is a cartridge line with a strong reputation and a weak paper trail. The advertising record is consistent about the family's positioning: premium pricing, tracking ability as the selling point, stylus refinement as the generational upgrade. The independent record is thin. Buyers should expect to identify their specific variant by the stylus assembly and the accompanying booklet rather than by any single archive source. A listing that claims "V15 Type" without a variant number is a question, not an answer.