I recently resurrected my old Grace F-9e (circa 1980) - here's how it fared this past weekend.....
It was compared my lovely Grado Green (w/Longhorn stabilizer and damped coils) that most often fronts my front-end.
The Grace has the microdynamics down - it
sounds like a more expensive cartridge. It has more detail and instruments are rendered a bit more true to life (eerily good harpsichord, lovely airy right hand piano notes, cymbols sound true to life - in fact the top end is as good as any moving magnet I've
ever heard - quite a treat)...and yet it's one of the few cartridges with that all day, play mo' listening trait. It's not only hifi, it's goodfi
It
should be better, tho - $200 when new (in 1980) is equal to about $500 today. The Grado was $60 last year when bought. Grado can't be using much of a decent styli to speak of at that price - the difference in sound quality alone could be partly due to that.
The Grado is a bit grittier overall - the details are obscured. Instruments are rendered a little more falsely. Bass quantity (and output) is better...but bass tautness is not as good. I'd rate the overall middle ground (midrange) to be about a tie - with a slight edge to the Grace for the upscale sound if has. The Grado has this amazing vertical (holographic) size to the soundstage that is unmatched by anything I know of at any price....it's just that the instruments are rendered a little less true, and more 'cloudy' within that huge halo.
When things get dicey (crescendo's, winding guitar solo's, etc) the Grace holds it together better. The Grado betrays its humbler origins and it gets a bit unglued/whooly at the limit.
Overall, I think I like the Grace better - but the Grado has nothing to be ashamed of for $
60.00. I would like to hear what $180 (Gold) or $300 (Platinum Woodie) does for the Grado, tho.
Of the several cartridges I own - this is the order I rank them:
1. Grace F-9e (with Plast-i-Lator)
2. Grado Green (with Longhorn, damped coils and Plast-i-Lator)
3. Ortofon X5-MC (with Longhorn)
4. ADC TRX-1 (with Longhorn)
5. Audio-Technica AT440ML/OCC (with Longhorn)
6. vdH re-tipped Sumiko Blue Point (with Longhorn)
They each have separate headshells and my JVC arm is damped vertically and horizontally - so cartridge mismatches are all but eliminated. Changes are made, with full re-calibration in minutes, so differences are easy to hear as not much time elapses.
The first two are listenable 24 hours a day, #3-5 can be used in short durations (#3 can be handled longer than #5, for instance) but they are not
desirable, and #6 just sounds like screechy crap
NOTE: I get a sense that the ADC is still 'tight' even after 30 hours break-in. I may want to re-rank and re-evaluate after 100 hours on that one. The rest are as good as they are gonna' get I feel, for what they are.
The Plast-i-Lator is fantastically helpful for sonics. It's just a pinch of Plast-i-Clay modelling clay between your headshell and top of your cartridge body. The Cartridge Man is definitely on to something with 'The Isolator', but 150 smackers for a wad of mastic or rubber and two thin strips of stainless steel in senseless
Everything is just a bit more solid with the Plast-i-Lator in place. There is something about that headshell/cartridge interface that cries out for damping - and the Plast-i-Lator handles the job quite capably.
A lb. of Plast-i-Clay is $4 in any hobby shot...and you use maybe 1/200th of it for one Plast-i-Lator with similar effect.
