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In Reply to: RE: New stylus or New cartridge posted by LilahsDad on January 30, 2024 at 21:23:59
did you like the Grado sound? or are you looking for something a bit different....
Follow Ups:
@Story--I enjoyed the sound of this Grado tremendously. $325 for a stylus (unless I try a less expensive one) vs > $600 for a Nagaoka MP-300 (or less, apparently, from CDJapan--thank you @EC1876). To most of the rest of you--thanks for derailing this with a lesson on "inflation".
Dissembling is my specialty.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
Dissembling or disassembling?
nt
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
Grado sells a replacement stylus for the TLZ, but it's $325!!! And no specs are listed on Grado's website! What justifies the $325 whopper of a price tag?
If I loved the sound of that cartridge, I'd put a Red/3 stylus in it and call it a day. We've both played around with Grado carts, IMO if there's a difference between the cheapest Prestige and the most expensive, it's inaudible.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
Edits: 01/31/24
I don't consider 325 a "whopper" of a price today. The Joe Grado sound is legendary for a reason.
I'm running a Grado cart on one deck right now, a Grado Gold with a years ago, lowest cost Grado stylus from (1970?), the Grey body and 2 white dots elliptical. A thick cantilever high Moving Mass also, the opposite of what everyone desires. Original cost? 17 bucks. Quality? I don't have a high enough magnifier to say. All the styli are interchangeable except for the wooden body ones.
I got that learned advice about the lowest cost stylus from George Bischoff who eventually started Melos amps and speakers back in the eighties. It sounds great at 2.2 grams and tracks very well. It's really stupid good when you think about it, 17 bucks original cost. Do you get 325 bucks worth of improvement? Most likely not. In the past I've owned a few different Grado's but this one is a keeper. I have one more stylus in the wings.
You might be right about the Red but I can't exactly say. I had a Nagaoka many years ago and I wasn't impressed with it, but I don't know what they are like today.
How much is the Nagaoka? Maybe he would be better off with an AT instead?
I will say I really like the Grado sound.
It uses the same .4 x .7 diamond as the MP-150. It's a high quality diamond, at least, but the MP-300 is more than twice the price of the MP-150. It better be twice as good.
I have a Nagaoka MP-150 and I've compared it to the AT VM540ML in all three turntables here. The Nag is good, it tracks well for .4 x .7 but it's brighter than the AT, bass isn't as solid or strong, channel separation isn't as good. Sells at Amazon for $279, same price as the VM540.
The Grado TLZ replacement stylus? How about some specifications to justify the price. Grado doesn't list any specs. None.
I like the Grado house sound, the problem for me has always been tracking and sibilants. If Grado sold a cartridge with AT's Micro-Line stylus on it, that would be perfection.
I think about 90% of audio gear is overpriced. Music Direct sends me that heavy catalog every year, I look through it and shake my head. Chinese-made 50wpc integrated amps with big-ass VU meters that cost more money than I paid for my car? What great breakthrough in circuit design justifies the $6K price tag?
I think they charge that much because some people will pay that much.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
It's $447 if you order from CDJapan.
Amazon price is almost never the best price.
I know the cartridge is well reviewed, but I've never exactly trusted reviews.
I can tell you this much; I'm not going to spend $447 plus shipping to find out for myself one way or the other.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
and it's not going to go away. It hasn't in 70 years.
It's funny about the sibilance with Grado's. I've had that problem once before. Ruined 1 record. They require an absolutely perfect setup and if that doesn't work, throw it against a wall after realizing you wasted 3 hours of your life. Quite an emotional response, I know.
I cannot say anything on their QC now, and if that is still a problem.
Maybe someone else will chime in on this
Or at least, not that kind of inflation.
A $500 integrated from 1980 in today's dollars is about $1900, and back then that Yamaha or Kenwood or whatever was MIJ not MIC.
Besides, look at Schiit Audio, or that Fosi amp I bought last month. Hell, for that matter, my Rega P6. Would have sold for less than $500 in 1980 which is right in line with the typical TT from that era. The Schiit Vidor is supposed to be a great amp, makes enough power to drive Maggies, sells for $800. That would have been an insane $216 1980 dollars.
Too many manufacturers market to people who have more money than smarts. Folks who think something is only good if it's expensive, styled to within an inch of its life (and money spent on styling wasn't spent on quality sound), with big fancy meters that look great when the lights are dim and the bourbon is flowing.
They're probably streaming their music from Spotify or Amazon anyway, so it all sounds like crap.
Sorry. Went away for a moment.
The stylus that came with a Prestige Black/2 a few years back is a honey. It tracks sibilants really well.
I set the VTF at 1.7 grams, which is heavier than Grado calls for.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
Edits: 01/31/24 01/31/24
and the worst offender in the last 20 years is the present administration.
Sorry but I'm not going to proceed with any further talk on this per Asylum rules
It can't be, not if prices for three quarters of the gear in the Music Direct catalog are outstripping inflation by 200%. Or more. A $500 amp in 2023 dollars should be $1900, not $6500, unless some new and much more expensive type of manufacture has been discovered. Which is about as likely as Abe Lincoln leaping from his grave.
Sure, there's some inflation. That Schiit Vidar amp used to be $700, now it's $800. But there's no reason for Un-named-manufacturer-with-Japanese-imprint-that-now-builds-gear-in-Chinese-factories to sell a 50wpc (into 8 ohms only! No 4 ohm speakers need apply) integrated for $6500, other than they can get away with it.
It's an unfortunate aspect of our shared hobby. People will spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars more than they need to for brand names, fancy meters, lights, styling, etc. It's always been this way.
There's a bottomless well of people who buy things to satisfy their own self image regardless of whether or not the stuff is worth the money. It's true across the board in all consumer goods, but it's worse when it comes to audio.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
Edits: 01/31/24 01/31/24
"There's a bottomless well of people who buy things to satisfy their own self image regardless of whether or not, the stuff is worth the money."
Certainly not in all cases. Maybe if you're buying a Bugatti or a Patek Philippe but many buy expensive things because they truly feel the quality is better. This may or may not be true. It may have nothing to do with ego. If I buy an expensive audio component, it has nothing to do with self image, not at my age. It's because I'm convinced, after researching, that it's a superior product.
Which, again, may or may not be true. There's an element of self deception too. Like $360,000 turntables.
Take automobiles. Even Rolls Royce is built mostly by the same robots that build Hyundais. Hell, Hyundai probably made the robots that build a Rolls.
There was a stereo shop here in Pittsburgh that was my big influence in audio. The store probably went out of business because the goal was to market against the overpriced and to disabuse the prospective buyer of any self deception. When I leaf through the pages of an audio catalog or look at reviews on websites like Analog Planet, I just imagine what the owner of that long gone audio store would have had to say.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
Edits: 01/31/24 01/31/24
I agree. And nowhere is this more evident than when Fremer does his turntable or cartridge comparisons. When he has compared expensive with inexpensive cartridges and asked viewers, after playing a clip of both, which was which, inevitably opinions were almost equally divided. But there were some who said they could detect huge differences. And often, they were wrong: they liked the inexpensive cartridge. These people think they have golden ears but, in fact, their ears are just pedestrian!
I remember when the first sets of "audiophile" interconnects showed up at a local audio store. I jumped, even though the price was high for the day.
Of course, I swore up and down the cables made a huge difference but in reality they didn't sound any different than the cheap stuff from Radio Shack.
My brain said I heard a difference but the difference wasn't really there. After a few weeks, the cables went in a drawer and never came out again.
As far as inflation goes though, if anything, there's been deflation. A good example is LP prices. The MoFi LPs I bought back in the late 70s, they were $18 bucks. That's 84 2023 dollars.
But reissues from outfits like Rhino, Craft, Blue Note, Verve, they're in the $30-$35 range which would have been $7-$8 in 1978.
The Schiit Vidar amp is $800, which was 171 1978 dollars. You couldn't even get a decent 20wpc receiver for $170 in 1978.
I bought a Fosi V3 last month. It was $130. In 1978, it would have set me back a whopping $30.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
Edits: 01/31/24 01/31/24
There are exceptions, though. Electric Recording Company's lps are worth every penny of the $500 they charge. (Kidding!)
...the typical LP today costs less than the typical LP did in 1977 or 1978 in terms of real dollars and the quality is a lot better now than it was then.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
I'm not familiar with the word "grogan" so I looked it up. Evidently, you meant something else?
Edits: 01/31/24
Back then, an old grogan was one of those grouchy-ass old persons that disapproved of everything and everybody younger than they were.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
The Nagaoka MP 300 is fairly expensive for an MM, though some say it's really an MI. It gets excellent reviews and is said by some to be among the best MMs, though the MP 500 is the top of the line and more expensive. Output is 3 MV, lower than many MMs.
Edits: 01/31/24 01/31/24
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