GRADO CARTRIDGE & TONEARM COMPATIBILITY


Hello all. I am wondering if the Grado Reference Master cartridge would be a good match for my Rega RB300 tonearm as far as compliance, tracking, and resonance are concerned. Your opinions and experience are appreciated. Thanks.
gjpgamer

Showing 1 response by mrkidknow

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."