Shure Whitelabel WHLB Jico replacement: Thoughts on Ortofon Club & Taruya 05M-2
Been using the Shure Whitelabel needles reliably for DJing and home listening since 2004 and have been struggling to find a replacement since the discontinuation. I had a couple sets of replacement styluses that got me through for a while, but those eventually got gummed up.
I bought the Jico N-WHLB Nude styluses in 2025, and they are useless. Fine for playback, but tracking sucks and they do not work for cueing / djing. They skip all over the place when cueing.
Do the new Jico WHLB-SD (synthetic diamond) improve tracking / cueing?
I have tried two different sets / brands of needles to replace my whitelabels entirely:
- Ortofon Club: Track decent (not as good as the shure's), work fine with djing, they probably sound as good as the whitelabels. However, the physical cartridge is audible. I can hear it over the stereo at low volume (65-70db) home listening.
- Taruya 05m-2: track well, super high gain. Great for DJing / club use. The tone is decent, maybe a little too much gain above 2khz IMO.... HOWEVER, the physical cartridge is comically loud. Like I can hear the full song coming from the headshells from 10 feet away - over my stereo. Super distracting for home listening even with the stereo at a moderate 75db volume.
I can use either the Ortofons or the Taruyas for DJing, but I can't listen to them at home lol. Well, I can listen to the Ortofons at daytime volumes, but not late at night. I can not listen to the Taruya's at home. Is this some sort of side effect of the Banana style headshells?
Does anyone have a Whitelabel solution??? Some dead stock styluses from shure? Are there reliable M44 alternatives? I'd even be open to those at this point.