The AT-VM95EN has a bare, elliptical diamond stylus with a round shaft, which is cut from a single piece and inserted directly into the cantilever. This allows for a lighter, stiffer transmission system than with a mounted diamond stylus with a titanium round shaft like the AT-VM95E. The bare diamond stylus is a lot more expensive, but also offers audibly better audio quality with particularly high fidelity in the treble reproduction and excellent impulse response.

Even the best diamond needle wears out after some time – conical needles after about 500 hours, elliptical needles after 300 hours, microlinear needles after 1,000 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.

An elliptical diamond needle follows the deflections of the record groove with greater precision than a conical needle, thus enabling a better frequency response with higher phase fidelity and lower distortion.

This complete system includes the AT-VM95EN cartridge and the AT-HS6BK headshell with die-cast aluminum housing (9 g).