GRADO CARTRIDGE & TONEARM COMPATIBILITY

I used a Reference Sonata in a RB300 with excellent results. Go for it!

The Kerry Audio Design F2 titanium heavyweight counterweight for the RB300 tonearm allows for even better performance, and no DIY skills necessary.
Well worth picking up if you see an ad. Not certain whether it is still available new from the original Canadian source.

Long time previous Grado user. The RB 300 will work fine.

Your cartridge will either work or it won't. Grados can be cranky cartridges and some people get the dreaded Grado "Dance" whereas others do not on the same set-up. Many people have had success with the RB300 but read my experience below:

I have a Grado Reference Master and it started-out fine on my Denon DP-59L with the straight tonearm. Once it got past 70 - 80 hours of play, the dreaded "dance" started. I moved it over to my Bix turntable that was equipped with an Origin Live Silver MkI tonearm and it still "danced". Tried adding more weight to the tonearm but to no avail. Both these tonearms are fairly close in effective mass to the RB300.

I went the opposite direction and put the cartridge on an Infinity Black Widow (the lightest effective mass tonearm available) and that solved the "dance" problem but the tradeoff was a drop in bass output. I will try adding some mass back to this combo to see if the bass response will pick back up before dancing reappears.

So the moral of the story is "Start with a medium effective mass tonearm as Grado recommends but if you get the dreaded dance effect, be ready to run to a very lightweight tonearm and finetune from there."

Greetings to all, 

I recently got a Grado Platinum3 to use on my Graham 1.5c tonearm.

Almost immediately, I noticed that the cartridge and arm would appear to “shimmy” on certain recordings.  After doing some research, I found out about the “dreaded Grado dance.”  I guess this is what is going on.

Before the Grado, I had a Benz Micro Gold on the arm.  It never had a problem.  The Benz Gold weighs 5.7 grams, and the Grado weighs 9 grams. I never thought of the Graham arm as particularly finicky, but maybe it is.  
 

When I first installed the 9 gram Grado, balancing it and dialing in tracking force was not easy.  Dialing in the tracking force just about maxed out the distance I could unwind and push the counterweight to the rear.  (I ended up adding extra mass to the counterweight.) 
 

I am starting to wonder if all of this is going to be the case with any 9 gram cartridge?  Is the “shimmy” or “dance” particular to Grado cartridges? 
Am I limited to cartridges that weigh less than 6 grams? 
 

Thanks for any responses.

The shimmy is most likely due to a peculiarity of the Grado suspension interacting with the tonearm. So no, I don’t think you need to worry with other cartridges.