Grade Master3 cartridge--Moving Iron Design

Moving iron allows for the lowest mass on the cantilever of all three traditional classes, making the cartridges very lively and dynamic. Put enough turns on the fixed coils and you can have the advantages of high output too (a simpler phono stage and less tendency to hiss). Peter Ledermann has admitted he only makes low output MI cartridges so that buyers can use their expensive MC phono stages with them. Don't forget that SS, Grado and Nagaoka employ a traditional cartridge design, utilising iron or an alloy of it as the only moving mass on the proximal end of the cantilever, but if you go to an older arrangement, that of the Decca "tip-sensing" cartridges, it is the thin iron armature that is the only moving mass, and it replaces the cantilever altogether. This allows the lateral coil to encircle the base of the stylus:

and the vertical coil sits right on top of the end of the armature holding the stylus:

No wonder their owners love them! I am pretty much all in on MI cartridges, with three of my four regular use cartridges being of this type. The fourth is a mono MC, and I sometimes wonder about getting a London Decca Maroon mono to replace it, but it comes with a conical stylus.

I have two modern Grado cartridges which I hold in high esteem.

The first is the Timbre Reference 3, and the other is their second from the very top, the AEON 3. The AEON 3 is on my greatly upgraded Linn LP12 and it will be there for a very long time to come. 

Peter Ledermann has admitted he only makes low output MI cartridges so that buyers can use their expensive MC phono stages with them.

That’s a really interesting point, in favor of high-output MI (and MM). Since there’s NO moving mass penalty with regards to increased coil turns, the only potential cost to SQ would be in the signal going though more wire, and higher inductance. The advantages would lie in vastly simpler & easier phono amplification (less gain stages), and making the electronic noise floor drop away from consideration. In net, it seems almost silly to get a low-output MI cartridge? What would be the practical benefit to low output MI? It seemingly doesn’t make sense to buy a $multi-K LO-MI just because you wanted to reuse a LO-MC phono stage (extra gain stages) that (for some reason) didn’t have a switchable "just MM" mode. 

This interview details the issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYUOV3_Fog

You never hear anything about it, but there is a special-order medium output (1.1mV) version of the Hyperion called the Helios.

@dogberry:

I believe the new owners of the London (Decca) brand will put a line contact stylus on the Maroon model (which comes with a spherical/conical) for an additional $268. I say that because I sent them my Model 4RC to be rebuilt, and they offered me that option.

While Grado and other moving iron designs share the moving iron element with Londons and Deccas, they sound nothing like the latter. J. Gordon Holt characterized the lack of a cantilever in the Deccas as resulting in a lack of "cantilever haze." If you've heard a direct-to-disk LP you have an idea of the startling immediacy and dynamic characteristics of the Decca/London design.