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Which cart to use on my technics?

B

barryWest

Active Member
Bizarre day, was looking for a second low cost turntable to compliment my primary pioneer and replied to an ad for a technics tt for 20 bucks. Took a chance and drove out, turned out to be a SL-D20 in mint condition, and I mean mint, had the original box with styrofoam, manual, etc. Okay, not a bad tt, and it had a grado zt+ cartridge mounted that also looked brand new. Cool. So I am paying up and he says BTW, got some extra stuff to go with it. He gives me the following cartridge/needles, all brand new in unopened boxes:

- grado xt+
- ortofon tm 10h
- audio technical at112ep (two of em')

They are all p mount and will fit just fine. So the question is, are any of these superior to the grado zt+ that is currently mounted?
 
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Just from a quick look at VinylEngine, the Ortofon and AT spec better but there isn't much info on the Grado XT+. If it was me I'd try each one on a record you know very well and what you expect to hear. THEN decide which one YOU like better. The AT112ep can take a lot of upgrade stylus as well as the Ortofon. I don't know enough about the Grado to say for sure but quite often many of their cartridges can take an upgraded stylus and sound WAY better than they do currently.

If you take what you find at face value it's more than likely he found the Grado to work well for him in that TT and that's why it has the Grado installed. Of course there's always a lot of reasons why it's in there as he very well could have just never got around to trying the others out. He may have grabbed the others to experiment and just never got the chance. I'd clean up the stylus and if possible verify it's in good shape with a good magnifier. Then have some serious fun checking them out! What a better way to spend an evening or two just comparing the various ones and then you can let us all know how it turned out. We'll all be the wiser for your efforts and you'll have a second TT that you'll know what to expect when you play it.

And by the way for twenty bucks I'd say you got quite a score!!! LOL! Enjoy your assignment, should you choose to accept it...I'd be having a field day experimenting!
 
Both those Grado's are earlier version of the Grado Black

Meaning they were entry level cartridges. But you can upgrade the stylus for each.
 
My experience with Grados on a stock Technics SL-1200MK2 is that they sound pretty blah on that arm, but I'm not sure about how they do with the P-Mount thing. (Grados love a fluid-dampened SL-1200 arm though.)

I am also not so impressed with the low-end Grados in general, they can sound rather murky even when optimized. I love the Gold1 though, so a stylus upgrade might be worthwhile, but I'm not sure how much $$ you want to throw at this.
 
Cool, thanks for the responses on this, and yes, it was a nice unexpected score.

As suggested, I will likely pick a night sometime soon and give each one a try. I was hoping that one of em' would be an obvious stand-out, oh well. The current grado actually sounds very good so it will be interesting to see the differences.
 
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