Since historical shellac records only have monaural modulations, it is recommended to activate the "MONO" function when combining a so-called SP stylus ("SP" or "Short Play" stands for 78 rpm shellac records) with a stereo housing such as the AT-VM95SP and a commercially available stereo phono preamplifier in order to keep playback noise as low as possible.

The AT-VM95SP is a stereo cartridge for mono shellac records that, when used with a special phono equalization preamplifier for archiving purposes (with various functions for generating a mono signal from a stereo input signal, such as Mono L+R, Mono L, Mono R, LR Variable Mix), ensures particularly low background noise and distortion, since with historical records only the less damaged groove side can be scanned - ideal for professional archiving.

Even the best diamond needle wears out after some time – conical needles after about 500 hours, elliptical needles after 300 hours, microlinear needles after 1000 hours and Shibata needles after around 800 hours.

For this reason, we designed our VM95 series dual moving magnet cartridges so that the styluses are interchangeable and the cartridge itself can be used almost indefinitely. So if the stylus is worn out, you don't need to buy a new cartridge, just the right replacement stylus - or you can upgrade your system with a different, higher quality stylus.

All six VM95 cartridge models have the same electromagnetic drive unit (housing), so the six styluses in this series are also 100% compatible.

The conical, mounted needle with a large rounding radius (3 mil) at the tip is ideal for playing 78 rpm records from various eras.

VM95 series cartridges have two M2.6 threaded inserts that allow installation on the tonearm or the (replaceable) headshell without nuts. Each cartridge comes with four M2.6 screws (2 x 8 mm and 2 x 11 mm) and two plastic washers.