Bought a couple of new cartridges

Panamafred said:

Madison WI? Whats the name of the shop? I'm North of Milwaukee, might be worth the trip! Nice table

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vintagetuber said:

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I bought two cartridges. A Grado blue, and an Ortofon blue. I got the
Grado for my Technics SL-D3. The Ortofon went on the HK T40. Compared to the out dated carts that were on each TT, It is like night and day.

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Multiplex said:

Those Carvers are nice, too. Good sound and enough power to arc-weld with. Not to mention cool meters. Gotta have cool meters.

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Multiplex said:

I have used Grados on my 1300, (as well as on an SL-Q3,) and they will work. That arm is towards the heavier end of what they prefer, but they play well, and won't hum. If you try it and aren't happy with the performance, there are some some tricks to dialing in your tonearm resonant frequency that AK user Marcmorin advised me about... And they work.

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Multiplex said:

Give 'em break in time... I'm more of a Grado fan too, but I'll bet the Ortofon will open up nicely if you give it time. It's nude stylus is more advanced than the Grado, so it should hold it's own.

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marcmorin said:

The tracing area of both diamonds are the same. how the diamond is mounted to the cantilever is not so important. The mounting doesn't contact the vinyl. "effective tip mass" is a calculation of the whole of the stylus assembly. In the Grado stylus, the diamond accounts for about 7% of that total figure. The Grado will have a greater frequency response, and greater channel separation across the "usable" frequency range. The Ortofon will benefit from dialing in the capacitive loading due to it high internal inductance.

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Multiplex said:

That's true...

There must be something considerable about the nude mount of the 2M blue, though. As far as I know, the tracing area is the same as the red, yet according to all who have directly compared them the blue sounds different... Much better. There may be other factors at work there, like cantilever design, maybe tip cut or polish quality. I don't know. The most obvious difference is that the blue is nude and the red is bonded.

I honestly don't know, (I'm certainly no physics major,) so I may be very wrong... I thought the reason why minimizing tip mass was so important has to do with it's location on the cantilever in relation to the fulcrum point. (Opposite ends.) The more mass at the end of the cantilever, the less quickly it can respond to changes in direction. And the longer a cantilever is, the more leverage it gives this mass, and thus this effect is amplified, right? So even though it sounds insignificant, wouldn't lopping off 3-4% of your tip mass make a significant difference because of leverage?

For a Grado example, modern prestige styli have a more slender looking cantilever than my old F1+ stylus. Yet, IMO the F1+ smokes them. The F1+ has a beautiful nude rock, and the new prestige styli are bonded. On the other hand, the 8MZ (of current production) is bonded, and I would give it the competitive edge. However, there are still things that I think that F1+ did better. Could that be the nude tip at work?

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bobins08 said:

Just curious, what are the "out dated" cartridges that you replaced?

Sometimes a stylus upgrade can do wonders.

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marcmorin said:

I can't answer to the differences in the Ortofon. It does have a different pivoting system than the Grado. Calling it effective "tip mass" one naturally assumes we're looking at the mass created at the very tip during play. However, effective tip mass is a calculation of the whole moving mass. On the Ortofon, that would be the mass on the other side of the pivot, namely the magnet, also. To throw a wrench into the works, the longer the cantilever from pivot, the less mass is created at the stylus. How is this possible? The stylus travels a certain distance right and left, up and down during play. The further from pivot this happens, the smaller the arc in length of the movement. Because of gravity, velocity creates mass. the shorter the cantilver, the greater the arc. the greater the arc, the more distance the stone travels in the same amout of time. if it should have to travel twice the distance R/L to play the groove, the mass created at the tip is 4 times than the mass created traveling half the arc distance. Back to Grado specific a moment. It has a fixed pivot point just beyond the generating ring. There is no mass movement past the pivot, ie no teeter totter. The longer cantilever provides more mechanical advantage, but due to reduced length of arc creates less mass inertia at tip. The F1+ was a fine stylus in its day, only surpassed by the Signature 1. I have one in very low miles, I also have a G1+ in very low miles only surpassed by the Signature 2. I also have examples of the 8MZ in both original nude stone and re-issued bonded. I don't hear a dimes worth of difference. Most of the "sonics" are found in the cantilever( whole assembly) in just about any cart once you have comparable tracing faces on the stones.

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