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REVIEW: Grace F9E Ruby/Soundsmith Rebuild Phono Cartridge

Model:	F9E Ruby/Soundsmith Rebuild
Category:	Phono Cartridge
Suggested Retail Price:	$325.00
Description:	Vintage moving magnet phono cartridge with new rebuilt stylus
Manufacturer URL:	Not Available

Review by olddude55 on March 15, 2008 at 09:02:18 IP Address: 76.125.145.23

Add Your Review for the F9E Ruby/Soundsmith Rebuild

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Those of you who hang out here and read my posts on occasion are aware of my great affection for the Audio Technica AT440Mla. The AT is lively, fast, detailed, tracks like a freight train, costs about as much as a night out, so what’s not to like?
Wellll…it’s a bit bright in the upper mids and the highs can sound kind of artificial at times, but is that a good enough reason to dump a cheap cart that’s worked well enough to spur a huge expansion of the LP collection?
Probably not; maybe it was more a sense of, “If the AT is this good at it’s price, how good is the next level?” That, and a mind-seed planted by another VA Inmate, led me to a used Grace F9E Ruby at Audiogon.
Seventy-five bucks, broken cantilever, deal. I’d never heard a Grace before; the glory days of the mark came around just at the time I got married and had kids ergo no money for new hi-fi gear. Extensive research here and on the Hoffman board seemed to confirm that the Grace F9-series carts were something special.
Deal was made, and the cart went to Soundsmith at the end of January. Four weeks later, it was back, sporting a new ruby cantilever and line-contact stylus.
The cartridge sounded extremely thin at first, with a narrow, tightly-focused soundstage, but hints of it’s potential were there. It was pulling more detail out of the grooves than the AT did and it was passing my tracking torture tests with flying colors. Better, it was more pleasing to use on bad recordings (some of y’all like to get the best records out for new gear; me, I want to know what it’ll do on the bad ones). Ian Hunter’s You’re Never Alone With A Schizophrenic is a good example. The LP was mixed by Bob Clearmountain and despite Bob Ludwig’s mastering, it’s a typically too-bright late-70’s/early ‘80’s mix. The Grace toned down those upper-mids a put some space around the instruments in a way that none of the other carts I’ve used could, and with zero loss of high end detail.
Peter Lederman from Soundsmith advised me to play a lot of dynamic stuff however, and for the next several hours of use, it was all Sheffield direct-to-disc, MFSLs, and good classical recordings like the 45-rpm Reference version of Church Windows. This did seem to speed up the break-in process.
At the 10-hour mark, things started to fatten up and now, with just under 20 hours on the clock, Ruby just flat rocks. Soundstage is opening up and the depth of the imagery is outstanding.
The Grace has, well, grace. It’s got the velvety-smooth quality of all good MMs, yet it’s faster and far more detailed than the 440Mla; faster and more detailed than any cartridge I’ve ever used in fact. You can clearly hear John Lennon flub the last verse of “Please Please Me” and laugh about it a few beats later. The opening guitar lines of “Gimme Shelter” are as stark and perfect as if you were in the studio as the recording was being made. I never understood what the fuss over Mercury Living Presence records was all about until two nights ago when I spun the venerable 1812 Overture, and I didn’t even get to any jazz stuff yet.
I could go on until we ran out of bandwidth so here’s the basic nut—I’ve run a whole boatload of carts through my deck, including a couple of the big-time heavy hitters here on VA and found them all wanting to one degree or another. The Grace F9E as retipped—rebuilt, really—by Soundsmith beats them all hands down.
And a word about Soundsmith—Peter Lederman is excellent to deal with. He’ll answer any question you have and his work is of the highest quality. The stylus assembly he rebuilt for my Grace puts the JICO SAS in my Shure to shame, quality-of-construction-wise.



_
Everything's nice when you're covered in ice...

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Product Weakness:	Grace is gone, the F9 isn't made any more. Break the stylus and you'll have to send it back to Soundsmith.
Product Strengths:	Sweet liquid sound yet fast and detailed; excellent tracking.

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Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier:	Dynaco ST-70
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Kenwood Basic C-1
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Technics SL-1210 MkII w/KAB fluid damper
Speakers:	Stacked Advents
Cables/Interconnects:	Vampire Wire OFC series.
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Everything except disco
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner

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