You've run some pretty fancy MC's, but the _______ MM cartridge really impressed me

Both the ortofon 2m Bronze and the shure m97xe impress me. Own them both, among various moving coils, such as the Hana el, denon dl 103, dynavector 20x2 (low), & dynavector 10x5 (low). Also own other MM, such as ortofon om10, AT 520eb, both nice cartridges.

To be fair to Grado, it’s usually not the cartridge per se that hums, it’s either the TT grounding scheme, as in the case with a Rega TT, or it’s EMI radiated from the motor, if it comes too close to the cartridge. There are remedies in both cases.

Pindac, thanks for posting that YouTube video. Music is wonderful but has little to no bass content, so difficult to judge the overall cartridge performance. I take your word that it’s good. I was hoping there’d be some explanation of the preamplification being used, since ceramic cartridge output V is dependent upon stylus displacement not velocity. So ceramics don’t need RIAA filtering in the phono stage. What was going on when you auditioned the Philips ceramic?

Firstly using Youtube as a means to listen will certainly not give a true insight to what a demonstration has to offer. In this case it has helped home in on what I was experiencing. The Cart' in use in that Clip has Bass Extension, I can assure you, as the Roger Waters 'Amused to Death' recorded using Q Sound has proved. There is a track that makes one believe the system is on the verge of imploding due to the Bass extension, the Track on the system with the Ceramic Cart' in use was inflected with the same assault.

To further understand what was happening, the Link will cover the bulk of what has evolved for the use of the Cart'. I have the same model, as a result of being introduced to it through 'audioflyer', following on from when it had undergone the mod's referenced from Page 8 onwards.

https://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?41517-Philips-GP390-Ceramic-cartridge-NOS-1970s

Dear @lewm : As always there is nothing " new " about that cartridge. As a fact Micro Acoustics was who had more susccess about but they not named " ceramic ":.

""" The Micro-Acoustics cartridges had a different construction than Sonotone. The stylus arm was directly connected to the ceramic elements, an idea that was patented by Micro-Acoustics. The transducer elements were referred to as electrets, but were made of the same piezoelectric material, lead-zirconium titanate. The ceramic elements had resonance way above 20kHz to insure good response and separation to beyond 20kHz. The cartridges also had an internal microcircuit to convert the amplitude response of the piezo material to velocity equalization for use in a magnetic phono input on a preamplifier. ""

In the long MM/MC long thread was analizwed and I owned and own from the 2002e and other MA models and as I posted there and if I remember in other threads not only me but other gentlemans have a good opinion on the overall quality levels sound by Micro Acoustics cartridges. Comes as stand alone cartridges that you can mount in almost any tonearm well almost any tonearm because the MA are very ligth around 4gr and runs at 1gr. VTF and is a high compliance cartridge. Btw, in those old times MA developed and puts in the market a test/demostration LP recording that I own too and that time to time appears on ebay ( recomended ).

It runs directly in any MM phono stage and is not sensitive to load impedance/capacitance.

Here you can read something about and after that you can go to the 2002 model and you can take a look what a gentleman that owned sevral carrtridges like the Stanton 881S claimed and you know very well the 881 that’s " almost " the same as the 981 that you own:

https://www.vinylengine.com/library/micro-acoustics.shtml

Here on sale NOS and is the model I own for several years. Any one have to try/test/listen to these Micro-Acoustic cartridges including @fjn04 :

R.