That's right you had that Shure SC35C on it, didn't you?

It was certainly powerful sounding but the HF was hard & ultimately fatiguing. I couldn't have lived with it in the long term.
Yup, thing is though Barry's XSD-15 didn't sound like that at all when set-up in my system - quite the opposite in fact!

They must be different designs?

I guess that I just really like the sound of broadcast cartridges (DL-103 and such like), and to my ears in my system, the XSD-15 sounds like another very fine example of the breed

Marco.