Vinyl Asylum: REVIEW: Grado Reference Master Phono Cartridge by tubesforever

Model:	Reference Master
Category:	Phono Cartridge
Suggested Retail Price:	$800
Description:	Moving Iron
Manufacturer URL:	Grado
Manufacturer URL:	Grado

Review by tubesforever ( A ) on January 27, 2006 at 12:39:40
IP Address: 159.37.7.93

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A tale of two cartridges.
I actually own two different Grado Reference Master Cartridges. They both live in the same cartridge body and like Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the Grado Reference Master can be either a stunning performer or a pompous trouble maker.
At the time I was shopping for a new phono cartridge I wanted one with minimum internal distortion. Letâ€™s face it, MM and MC cartridges are plagued with distortion. Grado lists reasons why they feel moving iron is a superior technology to MM and MC technology. I have owned Grado MM cartridges in the past and found them to be great values for the money. This time I wanted to jump up as far as my meager budget allowed so I set my sights on the Reference Woodies.
I could not find a Statement Reference model within my budget. The Statement Reference outputs .45mv which my tube preamp can handle at moderate volume. I would need a step up transformer to get full volume.
I did find a Reference Master with the 4.5mv output. Grado loops a whole bunch more windings to get the extra gain so Grado recommends that if you have the gain for a low output you should do yourself the favor of utilizing the Reference Statement. You will be happier with the additional detail and air you hear.
I have been living a love hate relationship with my Grado since the middle of last August. Normally I do not take this long to review a product that I love or hate, but I realized it is not fair to judge a cartridge when my table and arm were so mismatched to its requirements.
In August I was enjoying my Rega RB250 project arm. I had removed all the paint, cleaned the bearings, rewired with AM Systems silver electrode wire and hung a variety of aftermarket counterweights. Stock this arm is specified as a 12 gram effective mass arm that puts it squarely in the low middle mass arms.
Unfortunately it was a terrible match for my cartridge. The sibilance in female vocalists was like a screeching distortion in the upper mid range. Every other area of the cartridgeâ€™s sound was superb. If you have ever heard an upper range Koetsu cartridge you know that the midrange is clearly detailed for you like food spread out on a banquet table. You can hear tones and textures that are so life-like you can close your eyes and know that performer is right there in the room with you. Koetsu does magic in the midrange. The Grado Reference Master that retails for 800 dollars gives me that same sense of grain less liquid musicality that my Koetsu provided.
It gets even better sound in some regards than my previous Koetsu. Most noticeably in the bass region where the Grado digs down to 10 Hz. My subsonic reinforcement drivers give me pretty flat bass to 16 Hz. The cartridge probably does go all the way to 10 Hz but this is not something my ears can discern and I do not have a strobe light to verify it. The Grado digs low and deep. It has suitable bass definition and control but is just the slightest bit loose vs my Denon and Ortofon cartridges. The Denon and Ortofon do not go anywhere near the depth of the Grado, so I am willing to put up with just a little looseness to get down to where I hear the air move from a Pianist pushing their foot pedals. This is really intoxicating, since this low level detail also lets you hear the height, width and depth of the concert hall or recording studio you are experiencing. Such fun! This bass is really great!
What distinguishes my Grado from my Denon DL 103R and Ortofon cartridges involves its crystal clear highs. On my newly re-modified Rega arm, with higher effective mass than stock, the Grado will play a high hat, a triangle, or a cymbal with the attack and decay that I hear live. More importantly for me, I can hear the airiness of the wood wind instruments which makes classical music so enjoyable. The Denon and Ortofon cartridges I own just could not do this with the same degree of realism.
Being a Violin and Viola player, I like to hear the wood body of these instruments communicated properly. The Denon and Ortofon will hint at the body of the instrument, but the Grado lets string instruments project into your sound field in a way that really wakes you up. Guitar is flat out incredible. Cello and String Bass are similarly fleshed out.
I also play piano and this is a particularly difficult instrument to get the sound correct. The issue with piano tones is that you have a felt hammer striking a string, the strings are tensioned in such a way that you have the initial attack, a rising frequency as the string comes up to its resonant signature and then a decay. Many times the cartridge will impart a toy piano sound to this instrument. With the Grado the speed of this cartridge is extremely natural, so you will hear the hammer strike, and the fundamental piano tones rise and fall. You will also hear the pedals move and this is just intoxicating for me.
I love female vocalists. The Grado gets the vocal resonance and timber of the singer so clear that you could swear the performer is right there in the room. No mike, no artificial additivesâ€”just Sarah Mac Laughlin, Ricky Lee Jones or Anita Baker there singing just for you.
With male vocalists, some cartridges make the performer sound very thin or way too chesty. The Denon does a great job of getting female and male vocals realistically portrayed. However the Grado does this without any sense of grain and in a liquid way I have only heard from upper end Benz and Koetsu cartridges.
I guess to keep this shorter than my normal ramblings I will tell you that what I have valued most in all the years is the ability for a cartridge to reproduce an experience that is convincingly close to what I hear in live music. The Grado does not flesh out the midrange as well as a Koetsu, but what it does in the midrange it does with the exact same liquidity and grainless character. However in the bass and the highs I prefer the Grado! This is a very rare feat in my estimation.
To get the Grado to sing I had to really get to work on my table. It is a Kenwood KD 550 model. This is the direct drive unit, non suspended with a plywood base and a concrete resin plinth. The arm board is 4 Â¾ inch round plywood. I ended up building new arm boards of black acrylic to cure some of the discontinuity I found from the plywood stock arm board.
I also found that I had to add a bunch more mass to the turntable platform. Earlier I was using two granite 12 inch floor tiles with non hardening rubber as a constrained layer resonance trap. This was not enough for the Grado. Now I am using 6 tiles which weigh 38 lbs. I am thinking about adding even more. The greater platform mass communicates less resonance to the Grado.
I found the stock Rega RB 250 and Grado match to sound very sibilant. So I purchased two SME arms, a 3009 Series II Improved with FD 200 silicone dampening, and a 3009 Series III arm with the black arm wand. These have effective masses of 5.50 and 5.15 grams respectively. The sound from these arms is exemplary. The Series II sounds like rows 5-15 in a hall. The Series III sounds like row 15 to center hall. I love the Grado with both of these silicone dampened tone arms.
However I also decided to try the Grado with my most recent Rega RB 250 project. On this most recent project I cut the arm tube in half about an inch behind the cartridge mount. I use a 4 gram brass close fit bushing so I can adjust azimuth. This has dramatically changed the sound quality of the arm. First, the disjointed bass, mid-bass, midrange, upper mids, and highs are now cohesive and congealed. They now work together instead of sounding like highlighted areas of frequency response.
Most importantly the Grado now sounds incredibly luscious with the Rega arm. Why the Grado works with both a very light effective mass and a solidly mid mass arm is beyond my fathoming. I will leave this up to you to decide if the cartridge will work for you. I think it has been well worth my time and effort to find good matches since the cartridge sounds so delicious.
With the heavier Rega modified arm, the midrange is as pure and perfect as I could expect. I like it even better than the excellent SME midrange. The bass digs deeper and with better definition with the heavy Rega.. The highs are also much more clear and extended with the Rega. Overall the sound is much closer to â€œrealâ€ with the heavy Rega. I would not be disappointed at all with the SME if my listening were confined to the audience. With my experience as a performer, I really like to hear the transient detail the Rega delivers to me.
My goal in returning to Vinyl last year was to spend less than 1000 dollars and get the highest fidelity sound I could accomplish. Here is the break down on my table, arm and cartridge.
Kenwood KD 550 with stock Kenwood arm and Ortofon OM-20 about 90 dollars including freight.
Sold Ortofon OM-20 for 95.00 so the deck was basically free.
8 black acrylic arm boards 20 dollars.
One used Rega RB 250 arm 175 dollars including freight.
Pete Riggle VTAF 160 dollars including freight.
Kerry Audio F2 Titanium Counterweight 135 dollar including freight
AM Systems Silver Electrode Wire 51 dollars that wired 3 arms and 66 dollars for the phono interconnect wire.
Homegrown Audio solid silver tipped RCAs 75 dollars.
Nylon braid, Teflon air tubes and RF drain shield for the phono IC about 15 dollars.
Grado Reference Master cartridge opened but unmounted 535 dollars including freight.
So all together I have spent $1227 dollars and the sound just blows away anything I have owned before including some big name tables costing 3 times this much money. I have prat and sound that are completely satisfying.
My next quest is to get a Statement Master or even higher level Grado and then pour my money into more records.
I hope this review helps you get an idea of what the Grado Woody sound is about. Some here in the asylum incorrectly portray it as euphoric sounding. It is not. I find it entirely realistic in every way and much more liquid and grainless than the Denon or Ortofons that I have owned. It is the same liquidity as the Koetsu but not as engrossing in the midrange. It has the natural sound quality I adored in my WIN strain gauge cartridges I owned back in the 70â€™s. I feel the bass is much more controlled and palpable.
So if you have a budget from 300 dollars to 1200 dollars I recommend you find a dealer to audition the Grado woody cartridge of your choice. Then buy the cartridge that best matches your other equipment. In the end, I have found proper system matching to be the most important element of building a satisfying sound system.

Product Weakness: Finicky about set up, you need to get this spot on. It likes either very low effective mass arms or solidly medium effective mass arms. It displays a trace amount of sibilance in the upper midrange that was corrected by using the best arm.
Product Strengths: Completely liquid and grain less sound from your LPs. Great frequency capability from 10hz to 40khz.

Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier:	Precision Fidelity M7A
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Precision Fidelity C7 modified
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Kenwood KD 550 modified
Speakers:	DIY speakers
Cables/Interconnects:	Silver DIY using AM Systems solid core silver
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Everything I own
Room Size (LxWxH):	25 ft x 15ft x A frame
Room Comments/Treatments:	None needed with room configuration
Time Period/Length of Audition:	5 months
Other (Power Conditioner etc.):	PanaMax and Monster
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner
Your System (if other than home audition):	Pretty much flat from 16hz to 40khz, nearfield positioning mandated by room.

Product Weakness:	Finicky about set up, you need to get this spot on. It likes either very low effective mass arms or solidly medium effective mass arms. It displays a trace amount of sibilance in the upper midrange that was corrected by using the best arm.
Product Strengths:	Completely liquid and grain less sound from your LPs. Great frequency capability from 10hz to 40khz.