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Re: Grado cartridge/preamp loading setup??

199.107.130.15

I bought my Sota Sapphire Mk III with a Premier FT-3 and Grado TLZ II.
It sounded good, but the highs where like you described. I replaced the
tone arm with a SME V. Major improvement in the overall sound and more
neutral. The highs are way better. Better low end without the color. But
the two things I noticed were that the high frequencies still seemed to
be a bit attenuated, and the very low frequencies were there but a bit on
the sloppy side. I was comparing the highs to what I was use to, which was
an Ortofon X5-MC and Super MC-30. Now that I have gotten use to the sound
of the Grado and compared a record and CD of the same title, I find that
the highs are just as good, but not as harsh. May be it depends on the
record and how well it was made (CD also). I thought that the cartridge
could be worn, so I took it in. I was told that it was fine and the stylus
had plenty of life in it. They told me that Grados tend to sound better
with fluid dampen arms, and when the rubber parts in the suspension of the
cartridge degrades, the lows will get sloppy and the highs will sound
slightly attenuated (detail, image, and depth will suffer slightly). The
rubber will be fine for about a year in warm, dry, smoggy places like in
Los Angeles (DARN!!!), longer in other places. I was going to switch
cartridges, but I think I'll just stick with it and replace the stylus
(which will have new rubber that has not degraded I hope). Smog and rubber,
bad mix.

I set the resistive load on my Pre-amp to 100K and that slightly improves
the frequency response of the highs.


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  • Re: Grado cartridge/preamp loading setup?? - Vinyl Junkie 08:37:29 03/23/99 (0)


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