audio-talk

Ohh, the Music Maker.

Years ago I had a couple of Music Maker cartridges which were based on the Grado. The Mk2 and Mk3. Lovely, sublime sounding cartridges and high output so no having to faff about with high gain phono stages or MC transformers. I'd probably still be using them now were it not for the fact that on certain records I'd get the "Grado Wobble" - the record surface would start the thing oscillating and you'd see the bass cones flap wildly in and out.

And yes, I know about cartridge arm matching, and yes I tried it in many different arms varying widely in effective mass. I had a friend who had exactly the same issues with his, we just couldn't get them reliably stable. It wasn't on every record, maybe one in every 10 or 20 or so? At the time this was a known issue with Grado cartridges.

This was a good 15+ years ago though, I'm willing to bet the current ones don't have this problem - sounds like yours is working fine, Steve.

Yes,
My Prestige Black 2 seems to be fine in the SME arm. I’ve not seen any strange antics.
The word is that the SME FD200 damper improves things even further with Grados.

Might have to try another grado, i tried a wood bodied one that i cant remember the name of. and thought it was broken.....
Perhaps it was.
The soundsmith moving iron was brilliant when it tracked, but got right on my last nerve when it didnt.

Ive gone back to the dynavector (again!) Instead of the 33sa. Dunno if it could be classed as a classic, but the dv20 high output mc range has been going for 40 years now.
It just has more life to it even though the 33 is 'technically' better. Its just abit laid back. Mind you, the 33 range came out of the 32 range and those were in the 1981 audio technica catalogue i have

And back to the at33 again.
I cant decide between them
I might send the dv off for a new stylus at some point next year, i dont know how many hours are on it

Finally managed to get the at33 to come alive, in my set up it needs to be set to about 88 degrees, so nose down rather than parallel to the record. Dunno why it should be different to others ive got but there we go

I have had a similar experience with this Goldring cartridge, initially set the arm parallel- sounded a little dull, moved the tonearm up maybe 3mm and it came to life. It seems like these more exotic stylus profiles, need a little more experimenting with. Never got that concerned about VTA before always set tonearm level. The surface noise also dropped too on increasing VTA.
Now I wonder if the Ortofons are sensitive to VTA too.