Seeking arm suggestions for a Grace F9R

Great to see the Grace F9E still being discussed; understandably as we are not likely to hear anything less offensive-sounding. To my memory, it was unerringly sweet and lyrical.

Around two years ago, I ordered the Soundsmith own OCL/ruby stylus for the F9E. I never got to hear it because I ruined it during installation. The original has a metal (brass?) barrel behind the cantilever while the SS does not; instead it has a rubber sleeve over something limp which you insert into the cartridge. The rubber sleeve on my sample wouldn’t slide into the cartridge, and when I exerted a little more force, my fingers slipped and toke with them the cantilever. PL conceded that his sample would have some trouble with a very small number of the Grace, so perhaps it would be better to send him the cartridge and have him fit it.

But one should note that over in discussions at VE, someone there had an image of he original stylus having a resistor (?) inside the brass barrel and that it accounted for the MC-like quality of the F9E. Those are my vague recollections and someone here may better remember what that was all about. But, clearly, the SS would be very different sounding from the original since it does not replicate a seemingly critical component of the original. Maybe the SS could sound as good, or better, as Lewn here suggests, and I haven't read about anything to the contrary, but I was not thrilled with SS deviating from the original design decisions of the Grace too far out. I opted to stay clear.

Chakster, I have searched in vain for said image of a cut-up brass shank of the original. It may well be on a forum other than VE. I seem to remember seeing more than the suspension tie, otherwise the writer would have nothing to write about if there was just that tie wire.

Tried, but couldn’t track down the link to the image. I see that another user at Audiokarma more recently has examined, but not shown the innards of the F9E’s shank. He says, and I quote :

Q: Is that a magnet on the back? If so, this design is moving iron and moving magnet sort of.

Yep. A tiny, fairly strong one on the back of what I think is a permalloy tube. The cantilever is epoxied into that tube, and the magnet attaches with its own magnetic force to the back end. It's interesting that this design is substantially different than the other F-9 styli assemblies: The ruby has no tie wire at all. Its only point of contact is with the elastomer suspension that the very base of the cantilever is pressed up against (maybe assisted with some sort of fixative?). I am pretty certain that the rest of the F-9 styli have a tie wire in addition to the elastomer, and that the tie wire was probably terminated in the drop of green goop on the back end of the F-9 stylus assemblies. I'd like to disassemble a stylus, but the one i have has a nice clean break that would be easy to graft - so I'm nit sure I want to sacrifice that one or not...
 
The point is the F9E stylus assembly is unique, and third party products won’t have, quite obviously, the same desired results. Here’s an image of the SS and original assemblies taken off, not ideally, my cellphone camera.

[IMG]http://i63.tinypic.com/dlhysl.jpg[/IMG]

The hyperlink of the thread at Audiokarma didn't seem to work.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/your-favourite-mm-carts-styli.788016/page-5