@elliottbnewcombjr Thank you for the information. I will look into SS reworking the cartridge. I’m still looking in my toy boxes for the F9E-Ruby. I thought I purchased one? The sapphire cantilever rings a bell with me also.
Joe
Fun with MM cartridge
Greetings,
I haven’t listened to a MM cartridge in over 35 years. Since I bought my first MC cartridge there was no need for me to listen to MM cartridges any longer. They just extract more music from records.
I have 3 turntables in my system, all with different MC cartridges. A few weeks ago I thought it would be fun to pull out one of my MM cartridges from my toy box and give it a listen. I installed a Grado XTZ on the TT. Gave it a listen, it sounded dull and lifeless. It’s a hard cartridge to drive, has a low output. I even move it to my MC input on my phono drive to get more gain. Same outcome. I was disappointed with the sound, since it has very few hours on it. Went to my toy box and installed a Grace F9E cartridge. Put on an album and gave it a listen. It put a big smile on my face. What a nice sounding cartridge. It had a good sound stage, bass was good, had good width, depth and height. Played a few more records, it is a fun cartridge to listen too.
I still prefer my MC cartridges but the F9E will stay on my TT for right now. Every once in a while I’ll listen to it, just to have fun.
Joe Nies
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Soundsmith Stylus Options for Grace f9 Body OP started this discussion about: https://www.sound-smith.com/parts/grace-f9-replacement-stylus read about the difference between their CL Contact Line, and MR MicroRidge here: https://www.sound-smith.com/articles/stylus-shape-information
General descriptions: The Aluminum bonded Elliptical RS-9EB ($149.95) Very good quality playback - Rugged design, Great for general purpose use or let the kids use this one!!! (Green body - not shown below - VERY limited supply) The Aluminum Nude Elliptical - RS-9E ($199) Provides high quality vinyl playback. Low mass nude elliptical stylus The Aluminum Nude CONTACT LINE RS-9U ($299) Features a fine line contact low mass stylus (better high frequency playback) RUBY-CL - (Model RCCN) Sapphire cantilever laser drilled for Nude Contact Line Stylus - ($399) - Excellent playback - fine line stylus profile with ultra-low mass Sapphire cantilever laser drilled to accept low mass CL stylus. RUBY-OCL - (Model RCONS) Our top shelf Ruby cantilever and OCL stylus ($499) delivers the absolute finest high frequency tracing of inner grooves possible. Requires careful setup and somewhat more frequent cleaning as per our coin/Blue stick method on our stylus cleaning page BMR - (Model BMR) NEW – Our newest ultra high-end Grace stylus for those who demand the best: Boron cantilever with Micro-Ridge stylus $999 ........................... note: the AT33PTG/II is Microline on Gold Plated Boron Tapered Tube, readily found on eBay for $499. The BMR Stylus alone is $999. https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/at33ptg-2 I've played my friend's Grace here with new Soundsmith BMR stylus, compared to my AT33PTG/II, we were easily confused trying to hear a difference, both sounded terrific with excellent imaging, and after saving money initially, AT has trade in program, I got a new AT33PTG/II for less than half price. It's Grace MM against AT MC ........ If you don't want to get involved with MC, SUT, the Grace MM f9 with an advanced stylus is a serious choice. |
OP no need to re-work it, it is not obvious, my friend also did not realize: the F9 Stylus is removable, you just buy one of the 6 choices listed above and change it yourself. After breaking my OEM Beryllium cantilever of my Shure V15Vxmr many years ago, I decided Boron was as high as I would go for both stiffness and price. I thought GEMs: Sapphire, Ruby (actually Ruby is a Ruby COLORED Sapphire) were stiffer/better than Boron, yet I read that Boron is technically far stiffer than Sapphire, all 3 far stiffer than Aluminum and the alloy varieties. Beryllium is off the chart lighter/stiffer than anything else, which explains my final decision to risk used cartridges with MicroLine on Beryllium, and the excitement of just finding a NOS AT160ml at a low price. https://service.shure.com/s/article/v15v-models-and-styli?language=en_US®ion=en-US Shure’s V15Vxmr description Beryllium MICROWALL/Be Stylus Cantilever for Lowest Effective Mass Ever! Beryllium has extremely low mass and high stiffness. These properties result in superior performance, however, only when the material is geometrically optimized. The ultra-thin (0.0005-inch) beryllium MICROWALL/Be tube, shown in Figure 1c, has the lowest effective mass and highest ratio of stiffness to mass of any stylus cantilever ever, resulting in unprecedented high-frequency trackability. Below is the Stiffness to Mass ratio for the three different types of beryllium cantilevers shown in Figure 1 (inside back cover). The physical characteristics of beryllium allow a longer length low-mass stylus structure. The resultant longer cantilever achieves the proper vertical tracking angle for a better match to the recorded signal and lower distortion. MASAR-Polished Micro-Ridge (MR) stylus tip The MR Micro-Ridge stylus tip has a very small //////////////////////////////////////// In all cases I prefer the light tracking forces possible by the advanced materials. A very nice MM option is to find a Shure V15V Body and buy a new /JICO Stylus SAS on Boron which is what I put in my old V15Vxmr body, various combos exist, pay attention to the small details. |
@elliottbnewcombjr I thought the stylus was removable. I recall buying the Ruby, but have not located it, yet. It was 40 years ago, maybe my memory is incorrect. Joe |
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