[lonestardiver]

Please be kind as I’m fairly new with upgrading styli, headshells, compliance and such.
I recently purchased a PL-71 that had been locally serviced as an upgrade from a Technics SL-Q2.
It has the Shure V15 III cart with an unknown stylus. Granted it works I want to replace the Stylus with a Jico HE or possibly the SAS/B before I play some of my better vinyl on it.

I’m concerned with the current headshell which is a generic headshell being too heavy in this situation.
It weighs in at 15g with the cart right now. Based on the Shure’s weight the headshell is about 9 grams. Are my concerns justified and should I be looking at updating the current headshell to a lighter weight?

Thanks in advance.

[S Clark]

9 grams is not excessively heavy, but there are lighter ones available that will run you $20-50.  Not much  else  in vinyl is that cheap, so why not pick up a ~7 gram one and see what it sounds like?  Ebay has lots  of  vintage headshells out there around 8 grams. 

[James207]

I had a Pioneer PL-518 that I used for over a decade. And for a few years I used a Shure cart at 2 grams VTF (vertical tracking force) and it worked and sounded great. It's a proven, perfectly compatible combo from way back. All the pioneer headshells I used were 9 grams and I'm quite sure the PL-71 is of the same era. Spin that vinyl.