I had a couple of cartridges lying around, and decided to compare them in this video. The cartridges in the order of appearance:

- Ortofon 2M Red
- Ortofon 2M Blue (on a Red body)
- Ortofon FF 10 XE w/ original stylus
- Ortofon FF body (the same) with a JICO NF15XE/II stylus
- Ortofon TM7
- Audio Technica AT85EP
- Grado Prestige Blue

The song you hear is Jimmy Smith: Slaughter on Tenth Avenue on the album Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The record was cleaned in a Spin Clean clone from Studebaker with Tegrikleen, and vacuumed with Vynil Vac, but it's been a while ago.

The turntables are Technics SL-1950 and Technics SL-QL5. The last 3 cartridges are T4P (P-mount), that I mounted with a converter on my SL-1950 except for the Grado that didn't fit the adapter.

I welcome you to share your conclusion down in the comments, but mine would be:

1. The 2M Blue while an upgrade to the Red, I'm not sure it's worth the money. The Red is a great cartridge for its price. The Grado costs 2x as much, and doesn't sound 2x as good. I got the Blue at a discount.
2. Older carts can perform better than new ones. The TM7 was surprisingly good, I don't know the history of the stylus but under the microscope it looked OK, and the replacement needle I got was a factory defect, and didn't want to wait until the replacement arrived.
3. I'm not sure JICO did a good job with that NF15XE/II stylus. The soundstage is very closed, and the middle range is noticeably softer, while the highs are very prominent, compared to the original stylus. My FF body has a simple rectangular opening, so it can take all FF and VMS styli
4. The Grado does the job, but it's underwhelming, and I'm not sure it does way better than any of the other carts, especially considering that it costs almost 5x as much as the AT85EP, which is my cheapest carts of all. The FF and the TM7 came with my turntables, and didn't cost me anything though.

Here's my rating

1. Ortofon 2M Blue
2. Ortofon FF 10 XE
3. Ortofon TM7
4. Ortofon 2M Red
5. AT85EP
6. Grado Prestige Blue
7 Ortofon FF w/ JICO NF15XE/II

The recording was done with a Canon M50, The SL-1950 was hooked up to an Onkyo A-9211 and the SL-QL5 was hooked up to a Technics SU-Z35. I got the line out from those directly into the camera.

Chapters:
00:00 Title
00:02 Ortofon 2M Red
01:00 Ortofon 2M Blue
02:00 Ortofon FF 10 XE
03:00 Ortofon FF w/ JICO NF15XE/II stylus
04:00 Ortofon TM7
05:00 Audio Technica AT85EP
06:00 Grado Prestige Blue

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