Grade Master3 cartridge--Moving Iron Design

@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.

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.

I forgot to mention that the output voltage of Londons and Deccas is a very high 5mV! Schitt includes a 33dB gain setting specifically for Londons/Deccas on their Mani phono stage, 40dB on the Skoll and Stjama.

Some London/Decca enthusiasts like to run their pickups into a lower than standard 47k Ohm impedance. George Counnas of Zesto Audio told me he put a switchable setting of 15k Ohm in his Andros II phono stage at the behest of his industry friends who use Londons/Deccas in their personal systems.

Early in my audio sales journey I had the pleasure of meeting Peter Pritchard as he was launching the Sonus line of cartridges.  Peter gave us a brief curriculum vitae tracing his work at GE Labs where he was on the team that developed the “variable reluctance” principle for phono cartridges…another name of MI.  He left GE to found ADC in Connecticut where he adapted his ideas for stereo and reconfigured the VR arrangement with a patentable tubular soft iron generator, which he dubbed “induced magnet”.  He also created a highly compliant suspension and relatively short cantilever…the ultimate expression being the XLM series.  How Sonus materially differed from those is a mystery to me.  His sale of ADC to BSR may have contained language allowing him to compete with them using his IP…I don’t know.  But I do know that for a few years, the Sonus Blue Label and ADC ZLM were at the pinnacle of the MI cartridge world.  

@bdp24 Glad to hear of the option for a line contact stylus with the Maroon. I lived happily with my Reference and Jubilee until I had to send my Reference back to John Wright for a rebuild. Learning that he was about to retire I started to explore other options hoping to find an MI cartridge that would sound like the Decca. I was surprised to find the MP-500 came closest. The Soundsmith cartridges I have are similar but praiseworthy for their own merits. The Grado Statement3 is the least like a Decca, to my ear.

I have never heard a Pickering or a Stanton. Nor any of the other now defunct MI cartridges.