I bought the Degritter after the Grado cartridge had been traded in for another cartridge. The Degritter is about five years old. Joe Grado died in 2015 I think. I think I sent him the Grado Reference in the nineties. I'm an old audiophile.
Stylus cleaners
I used to use Onzo ZeroDust with my first few cartridges years ago. With the last two cartridges, Hana ML, I have only been using the included Hana brush for every side of LP and the MoFi LP-9 liquid stylus cleaner (I get as much fluid out of the brush by pressing it against the neck of the bottle before I clean stylus) every 3-4 records.
Onzo is collecting dust especially since the Fremer’s The Tracking Angle article.
I’ve been looking at DS Audio ST-50 but at $80 I’m not sure it will do anything better than my current cleaning methods.
What’s your stylus cleaning routine?
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Thank you for the clarification @audio-b-dog In early 2000s I owned Grado headphones (I think they were SR80 or something like that) and they sounded great. I was always curious about Grado cartridges. May be I’ll try one someday. |
I owned the same headphones. Although Grado was the first to make a moving coil cartridge, he mostly sold moving magnet cartridges back then. The company may have moved back into moving coil cartridges. I haven't kept up. The Grado Reference was a very smooth cartridge. At $1K, probably one of the most expensive moving magnet cartridges back then. It was a demo on a Thorens turntable and I bought both the turntable and cartridge. I later bought a VPI TNT 3 and the cartridge sounded great on the turntable. I now own a VPI Prime Signature 21 with a VPI Shyla moving coil cartridge. It sounds very good. I think I have moved on from moving magnet cartridges, except I have a Clearaudio Maestro Ebony V2 in reserve, which I will send in to be retipped so I can use it when I send in the Shyla to be retipped. Retipping takes a couple months. The Clearaudio Maestro Ebony V2 is a wonderful moving magnet cartridge with a fineline stylus. When Michael Fraemer wrote a review on it, he said why bother with a moving coil when you can get all of that sound out of the moving magnet Clearaudio. |
I like the Shyla. It very clear and open, pretty much like all the other gear I've chosen. VPI took the AT cartridge and enhanced the midrange, but the cartridge sounds balanced. It's tuned to VPI turntables. For years I used tube gear, but I'm getting too old to crouch in the 20" space behind my racks and change tubes. I had the ARC Reference 3 preamp and PH-7 phono preamp, which did not sound too bloomy. Both were pretty clear. I find that the Pass Labs gear has a very similar sound, with the treble just slightly rolled to avoid treble harshness. When I began with tubes, I didn't think there was much to replace them, but now there is. My amp is a 20+ year old Hovland Radia, which was the only solid state piece of gear from Hovland. It is a very sweet amp.
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