To like this cartridge with my setup...but, it just won't seem to jell with any of my turntables, my preamp...or my listening tastes...
To back up a bit, I've been feeling lately like I have been giving the Grado Prestige Gold a short shrift and not really letting it strut its stuff, or live up to it's true potential...so, for the past three weeks I have been taking this cartridge which I felt was already broken in and playing it non-stop day and night on clean vinyl, cleaning the stylus properly with LP#9, Magic Eraser, and Stylast after each side, but really, letting the thing run in...
I've been using it with my Micro-Seki BL-51 with an Audio Technica ATP-12T tonearm...yeah, I know, might be too much arm for the Grado, but you gotta run what you brung, don'tcha...tonearm cable is one I custom made with a Cardas DIN plug, Cardas 2 X 21.5 Litz based cabling, and Cardas GRCM RCA plugs...preamp is my Audible Illusions Modulus 3A...amplifier is the Bryston 2B, and speakers this weekend were the BD Fostex based TQWP's I built a few years back and my venerable Ohm Walsh 2's....
This experiment was in response to comments about the cartridge needing a lot of run in time to sound it's best. Also, the VTA must be set up correctly, and tracking force, too...
The Audio Technica ATP-12T is really easy to set up, it uses a 50mm stylus mounting distance from the bayonet, and setting VTA is easily done by loosening a thumbscrew and moving the center column up and down.
I got the cartridge pretty much dialed in, that is, I got it to sound really pretty darn good and so for the past few days I have done no serious listening that wasn't done via vinyl and the Grado...I fiddled with this and faddled with that, but I did get the cartridge to sound as good as it can in my setup...
So, this morning I started out with a Dvorak Cello Concerto on Telefunken vinyl and thought that it sounded pretty good...on to some Mozart violin concertos on Angel, then a bit of "The Living Marimbas", and then on to Strunz and Farah "Guitarras"..hmm...then to Acoustic Alchemy's "Blue Chip"....well now, things were starting to get interesting...while there was good extension on the top end, there was a sense of murkiness to the midrange, that's about the only way I could describe it, kind of like being in the house of someone who smokes heavily and hasn't cleaned their windows in a decade or so...kind of an obscured, hazy "picture" of what was going on with the bodies of guitars, for instance....
So, due to the amazing world of interchangeable headshells, I took off the Grado and put on an AT 440ML/OCC...well...this was getting interesting, more clarity to the midrange, but it was only an incremental type thing...not like something that really made a whopping difference...now, in all fairness, the AT needs an album side at least to kind of "wake up" and start to strut it's stuff, but I was impatient and swapped it out, too....
I put on this cartridge that's got to be 25 or 30 years old, and hooked it up to a Signet MK10T MC transformer, and once again dropped the stylus into the groove...oh my...now THAT's what I'm talking about!
The midrange cleaned up and an incredible amount of clarity, without a trace of harshness or distortion or coldness, replaced what now was so obviously colored over from the Grado...the spatial attributes improved greatly, that feeling of the soundstage getting larger, more expansive, and losing the fog that now was shown to be there before from the Gold, instruments had a location, you could hear the sound of a guitar's strings vibrating with the kind of texture you hear when you sit close to someone actually playing an acoustic...the bass was even much better, deeper, tighter, more articulate, and the highs? Crystalline without the distortion that sometimes makes me wince on crescendos and peaks...in fact, it sounds to me as if the distortion products have dropped by a huge factor...snare drums, you could hear the sound of snares vibrating against the bottom head, not just some kind of "shiiish" sound, same with cymbals, you could hear the sound of the metal, not just the sssshhhhh....
The music just came alive, what was previously so obvious a recording, was now taking on life, clarity, reality, and making the den disappear even more...the performers were there, doing their stuff for me, and they were alive!
I really, really, really have tried to like the Grado Prestige Gold (mine's not the Gold1, but it is about a year or two old) and if I were unable to compare the cartridge to anything else, well then maybe it might be OK as I would be ignorant of the differences, and it truly is an unoffensive cartridge...but, in comparison to just about any MC and many of the other MM carts I have on hand from Shure, ADC, Acutex, Pickering, Stanton, Audio Technica, etc., I just don't see it...now, the Sonata, on the other hand, is a darn good cartridge, and my XTZ was pretty awesome, too...but, my tastes, my system, and my ears just don't work with the Prestige series of cartridges I'm afraid....
The Chesky Brahms Symphony #4 I just played was pretty amazing, it was like sitting in the Orchestra section 5 to 10 rows back...the Grado was more like sitting in the nosebleed section...and yes, I do go to the symphony at least a half dozen times a year...
Time now for a little jazz....
Well, no one can say I didn't give the Grado Gold a fair shake, that I didn't spend enough time with it, that I didn't try anything I could to make it sound as good as it could for me....nope, spent hours and hours trying to get that last little bit of performance out of it...and in the end, an old, low output MC cartridge spanked it's little bottom.....
The old cartridge?
A Denon DL-103S....and yes, the Signet transformer is not a perfect match for the cartridge's impedance, but it's what I have and what I used...and it doesn't suck at all...
Oh well...just another day in stereo land....
.
To back up a bit, I've been feeling lately like I have been giving the Grado Prestige Gold a short shrift and not really letting it strut its stuff, or live up to it's true potential...so, for the past three weeks I have been taking this cartridge which I felt was already broken in and playing it non-stop day and night on clean vinyl, cleaning the stylus properly with LP#9, Magic Eraser, and Stylast after each side, but really, letting the thing run in...
I've been using it with my Micro-Seki BL-51 with an Audio Technica ATP-12T tonearm...yeah, I know, might be too much arm for the Grado, but you gotta run what you brung, don'tcha...tonearm cable is one I custom made with a Cardas DIN plug, Cardas 2 X 21.5 Litz based cabling, and Cardas GRCM RCA plugs...preamp is my Audible Illusions Modulus 3A...amplifier is the Bryston 2B, and speakers this weekend were the BD Fostex based TQWP's I built a few years back and my venerable Ohm Walsh 2's....
This experiment was in response to comments about the cartridge needing a lot of run in time to sound it's best. Also, the VTA must be set up correctly, and tracking force, too...
The Audio Technica ATP-12T is really easy to set up, it uses a 50mm stylus mounting distance from the bayonet, and setting VTA is easily done by loosening a thumbscrew and moving the center column up and down.
I got the cartridge pretty much dialed in, that is, I got it to sound really pretty darn good and so for the past few days I have done no serious listening that wasn't done via vinyl and the Grado...I fiddled with this and faddled with that, but I did get the cartridge to sound as good as it can in my setup...
So, this morning I started out with a Dvorak Cello Concerto on Telefunken vinyl and thought that it sounded pretty good...on to some Mozart violin concertos on Angel, then a bit of "The Living Marimbas", and then on to Strunz and Farah "Guitarras"..hmm...then to Acoustic Alchemy's "Blue Chip"....well now, things were starting to get interesting...while there was good extension on the top end, there was a sense of murkiness to the midrange, that's about the only way I could describe it, kind of like being in the house of someone who smokes heavily and hasn't cleaned their windows in a decade or so...kind of an obscured, hazy "picture" of what was going on with the bodies of guitars, for instance....
So, due to the amazing world of interchangeable headshells, I took off the Grado and put on an AT 440ML/OCC...well...this was getting interesting, more clarity to the midrange, but it was only an incremental type thing...not like something that really made a whopping difference...now, in all fairness, the AT needs an album side at least to kind of "wake up" and start to strut it's stuff, but I was impatient and swapped it out, too....
I put on this cartridge that's got to be 25 or 30 years old, and hooked it up to a Signet MK10T MC transformer, and once again dropped the stylus into the groove...oh my...now THAT's what I'm talking about!
The midrange cleaned up and an incredible amount of clarity, without a trace of harshness or distortion or coldness, replaced what now was so obviously colored over from the Grado...the spatial attributes improved greatly, that feeling of the soundstage getting larger, more expansive, and losing the fog that now was shown to be there before from the Gold, instruments had a location, you could hear the sound of a guitar's strings vibrating with the kind of texture you hear when you sit close to someone actually playing an acoustic...the bass was even much better, deeper, tighter, more articulate, and the highs? Crystalline without the distortion that sometimes makes me wince on crescendos and peaks...in fact, it sounds to me as if the distortion products have dropped by a huge factor...snare drums, you could hear the sound of snares vibrating against the bottom head, not just some kind of "shiiish" sound, same with cymbals, you could hear the sound of the metal, not just the sssshhhhh....
The music just came alive, what was previously so obvious a recording, was now taking on life, clarity, reality, and making the den disappear even more...the performers were there, doing their stuff for me, and they were alive!
I really, really, really have tried to like the Grado Prestige Gold (mine's not the Gold1, but it is about a year or two old) and if I were unable to compare the cartridge to anything else, well then maybe it might be OK as I would be ignorant of the differences, and it truly is an unoffensive cartridge...but, in comparison to just about any MC and many of the other MM carts I have on hand from Shure, ADC, Acutex, Pickering, Stanton, Audio Technica, etc., I just don't see it...now, the Sonata, on the other hand, is a darn good cartridge, and my XTZ was pretty awesome, too...but, my tastes, my system, and my ears just don't work with the Prestige series of cartridges I'm afraid....
The Chesky Brahms Symphony #4 I just played was pretty amazing, it was like sitting in the Orchestra section 5 to 10 rows back...the Grado was more like sitting in the nosebleed section...and yes, I do go to the symphony at least a half dozen times a year...
Time now for a little jazz....
Well, no one can say I didn't give the Grado Gold a fair shake, that I didn't spend enough time with it, that I didn't try anything I could to make it sound as good as it could for me....nope, spent hours and hours trying to get that last little bit of performance out of it...and in the end, an old, low output MC cartridge spanked it's little bottom.....
The old cartridge?
A Denon DL-103S....and yes, the Signet transformer is not a perfect match for the cartridge's impedance, but it's what I have and what I used...and it doesn't suck at all...
Oh well...just another day in stereo land....
.
:yes:
