Grade Master3 cartridge--Moving Iron Design
Posting this because I just bought my first Grado cartridge since my entry level MM decades ago.I chose the Master3 because it was highly rated and I was intrigued by the Jarrah Wood, boron cantilever and the nude elliptical stylus at a $1,000.00 price point. It's not the most expensive cartridge I have mounted on my VPI Signature table, but it has an excellent balance. Have run it about 20 hours now and it has settled in.
My question is the moving iron system is an excellent design and why haven't more manufacturers seen fit to utilize it?
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.
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Peter L started out, I think, repairing B&O cartridges, which are all MI types, and the best of them can compete with any modern cartridge, IMO. That, I am guessing is how he got into the MI business. Even now he makes the SMMC line which is a reprise of the old B&O cartridges. Unfortunately, it does not appear that he can get the hollow sapphire tubular cantilevers of the old B&O MMC and MMC20CL series. That cantilever may be a key to the fantastic sonics of yore. I love MI cartridges and have yet to hear a bad one. All of mine are high output types. |
