@rauliruegas Raul, you could be a little more diplomatic about it.
A pitch too High!
Recently, I damaged the V2 MM cartridge of Clearaudio Concept Wood turntable, so had it changed with a Grado Prestige Blue. The VTF for V2 is 2.2g while Grado blue stands at 1.5g. I took someone’s help to fix this. He even made azimuth adjustments and it sounded fine. But I soon realised that the sound had become thinner, voice being the primary indicator and just before the stylus landed on the record, it skipped back a bit then hit the record. Sometimes the tonearm would skip all the way out of the record, backwards. I called the guy back, and he felt the VTF should be fixed to around 2g to avoid the backward skip. He did so and that problem was licked and it seemed the voice thinning issue had also vanished. But last night, I put on the first pressing of Aretha Franklin Amazing Grace, and all along I found her pitch way higher, it was all too high pitched and uncomfortable. Seemed the bass had gone missing a little. On my Boulder 866, I could immediately hear the difference when the track was played through Roon. It was not as high pitched, thin as it sounded on analogue. I intend to call the guy again but wanted to know from experts here as to what the issue could be.
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For the record, we use a Grado (wood body, low output) here at Atma-Sphere. I've run Grado cartridges many times off and on over the years. For test purposes when mastering LPs, I use a Grado Gold mounted to a Technics SL1200 to see if a regular common turntable can track the cut made. The simple fact is Raul is clueless about my personal life and simply has no idea of what he was talking about. I've used more Grado cartridges than all the others I've used put together! While it is true that the Grado site lists a rather low inductance (lower by an order of magnitude from what you would expect to see in a high output MM cartridge; I've not measured one of the high output units but I'd not be surprised if this is a typo), the simple fact is they respond quite nicely to loading. When a high output MM cartridge was all I used, I would load the Grados (as many of my friends did) at about 10KOhms with no capacitive loading at all. A few years ago I had a Transfiguration LOMC cartridge fail (one channel died) and sent if back for repairs. After a few days I was Jonesing for tunes and the only cartridge I had on hand was a Grado Green. Since the Triplanar is very adjustable and thus easy to set up, I installed the Green and took some care doing it. To my surprise it tracked beautifully. But it was a bit bright. So I loaded it at 10KOhms and the up front in your face brightness was gone- at that point its tonality was identical to the Transfiguration, which was at that time a $4500 cartridge. IOW I speak from direct experience. |
I use professional Grado DJ200i cartridges for about 15 years with standard 47k Ohms loading (or with optional 100k Ohms loading). Tracking force is about 2g. The DJ200i model is equal to the Grado Black series as far as I know, but with different styli made for professional use (with higher tracking force). In the main system my reference Grado is rare XTZ model. Those cartridges are definitely not bright. Maybe your stylus is damaged? You can try another stylus, professional styli are compatible with your Grado too. If you want to use higher tracking force you can always buy DJ100i or DJ200i styli. |
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