which cartridge is better?

[djproben]

I personally don't like Shure needles, they cue burn the shit out of vinyl (hince the great traction)..but if your using straight time-code I would roll with the m44-7s since replacing CVs are cheap.

Weird, my experience is the exact opposite -- far worse record wear with the Ortofons. It could just be the Ortofon Scratches that have this problem -- I don't know about any of their other carts -- but I certainly have never seen it in Shures (except when they are modified to emulate straight tonearms). Except with battle wax that gets seriously thrashed, but not from playing records.

[jimbob5000]

Both wouldn't be great for a club in my opinion - for one reason: elliptical styli. These have the potential to sound better, but they are prone to much more wear and tear on someones vinyl and worse tracking when moving the vinyl backwards - so obviously no scratcher's carts, but in the past I even found it to be tricky to mix with a Nightclub E. It does sound quite good, though.

There also is a Ortofon Nightclub model with a spherical needle. Better for your vinyl, but to be honest, for anything other than hard techno, minimal and the like, it sounds too harsh for my taste.

I don't know the Concorde Gold, but even Ortofon themselves say that it has basically been designed to look good on the Limited Edition Technics turntables. So my guess is that it's basically some fancy looking relabeled lower-end model for a steep price.

If I had to choose between the two, I'd take the Nightclub E.

If I had to choose another ortofon cart, I'd go for the bog standard Concorde Pro anytime. Best allrounder of the bunch.

Oh, and BTW, @djproben: The Ortofon Scratch (original model) tends to wear down really quickly, and when it's worn, for some reason seems like it basically eats your vinyl. It's not that bad with a properly adjusted headshell-mounted OM model, set at the bottom-end of the recommended tracking force range. I have some, and after going through a couple of replacement styli, I think I finally hit the sweet spot. Next time they wear out, I'm going to switch back to the OM Pro S though.