I have lots of carts, a couple of boxes full of MC's, a Decca super gold and a bunch of MM and MI and amongst them I have a Grado platinum, a grado statement reference and just bought a Grado gold2 with the idea to retip it when I bought it.. Now first of all the platinum wood, I could not get it to sing, the bass was ok, but a bit loose, mids were lovely, but highs were muted, so I put it in a box and forgot about it. Next bought the Statement reference, lovely extended highs, sweet mids and great bass with lots of clean air that you only get with top MC's. BUT only due to me making a mistake setting it up, I set it up arm tail high, level it is still nice but highs are not correct. Move on the the Gold 2.. Again I set it up tail high and this made a huge difference, I also forgot to turn off my MC head amp (volume was low thankfully) but it loaded the cart to 180 ohms not 47k and it sounded terrible really sucked out and flat. Pressing bypass on the head amp and the cart sprang to life so it might be worth messing with resistance loading with Grado carts as they are clearly very susceptible to loading.
Anyway googled arm height and rake angle and found a lot about Grado, apparently 92 degrees is correct not 90 as instructions say at 92 most elliptical will track the groove better. That extra 2 degrees will require the tail of the arm to be 8mm higher, but most 9 inch arms wont allow this so 6mm will have to do and this will allow for thick records too. Set up like this looking at the stylus with magnification to see when it is vertical, then dialing in the extra arm height will transform Grado carts and fix that rolled off top end. I tried again too with my Platinum wood set up in this way and it too sounds amazing.
Chris