Grado cartridges still worth the money?

Yes I know.  This was suggested already (maybe you).  When I talked to EAR about that they doubted it would make enough difference to fix my issue.  Grado support suggested I get another phono stage.  That might have worked also.  But in the end I sent the cartridge back to Grado and ended up getting a Dynavector XX2 mk2 which EAR assured me would work well with the 834P...and it does....and it sounds even better than the Grado, albeit at a cost of an additional $500.

the Grado family has been very smart through the years with their cartridges.... We used to mod them at Marcof,  our end product was better than any of the Grado's of the day....
We hand measured the coils and picked the tightest tolerances,  we inspected and selected the best stylus.... We opened them and added epoxy which killed all resonances,  we made our own mix of dampening and painted the cantilever dampening that also.... A dealer in New York called once and said Joe Jr is here trying to buy your cartridge... He was refusing to sell the cartridge to Joe... We told him to sell it to him.... About a year later,  we found our changes in their very best cartridges.... Grado put out a good product and learned and made changes at every turn.  From what I can tell,  the Grado's continued to improve over time. 

Hey guys, I have received the Reference 2. It has hum problems so I returned it. Later on, I got a chance on a NOS The Statement. Brought it. It has no hum! It has something special in terms of tones. I like it very much. Not as airy or dynamic as my VanDenHul Frog but much more musical and magical on those 'not so good' recordings. Not a step backwards along most MC's. I think they does worth the money. 

You can still get newly handmade Grado XTZ stylii (and other premium Grado stylii) from LpGear.

Randy
 Why don't you get a 1 to 10 SUT and run it into your MC section.  That coupled with 5751 tubes should work well.