Garrard Lab 80 Stylus upgrade?

Have a Garrard Lab 80 with a Shure M97 cartridge. Know the table has its limitations but I’m tempted to upgrade the cart to a Grado. The table used to sound great but lately my records sound a bit muddy. Cleaned and checked out the stylus and it’s in ok shape. Don’t want to sink too much money into a a new cartridge as I may upgrade the table in the new future. Thanks for any help!

 

It's nice to keep that Garrard going.

That cart version on that turntable probably came with the less expensive .4 x .7 stylus, not the XE stylus that the M97XE is most recently known for.

With my little experience with Grado, I don't think any current Grado will play nice with that turntable. It has a high mass arm, as arms go. I hope a Grado fan chimes in here with better info.

Among new current carts, I suggest an Audio Technica AT95E or newer VM95E, or the VM520EB. I think the VM95E is now the best choice of these three for that turntable, but the older AT95E, which is getting hard to find new, would be fine.

 

Not recommended. Too heavy mass arm. Get an Audio-Technica AT-VM 95 something on the conical or elliptical end. Don't expect it to track much lighter than around 2 grams, in perfect working order. Motor not too shielded either, so may well be a hum problem. Remember, this is a 1960's record changer (though it's Garrard's best changer they ever built)

 

Thanks so much for the insight. I’ll check out the Audio Technica carts. Know there are better sounding tables but the Garrard is a cool and would like to keep it running.

 

Ended up getting the AT VM 520 eb. Sounds really good on the Garrard. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.