Grado Reference Master V2 and Statement Master V2 Phono Cartridges

Description

MY TAKE:

If you prefer a warm, rich and relaxed tonal presentation from your vinyl, Grado cartridges are sure to satisfy. Fans of these cartridges find them particularly appealing in the midrange, while other listeners may prefer brands that offer more extension at the frequency extremes. - Galen Carol
 

GRADO'S STATEMENT AND REFERENCE SERIES PHONO CARTRIDGES -

Grado takes their outstanding line of Wood Body moving iron phono cartridges to new heights with the introduction of the Series V2.

Features include:

• Redesigned wood chassis featuring increased mass and optimized weight distribution resulting in improved audio stability and imaging.
• Redesigned coils resulting in improved signal transfer.
• New proprietary magnets further improve signal generation and transfer.
• Prices remain the same; how’s that for customer service!

For over 50 years, Grado has been manufacturing some of the World’s great phono cartridges. One of the oldest family-owned companies in the audio industry, Grado has been the leaders in design engineering for the high-end audio and recording industries.


Holder of 48 patents, company founder, Joseph Grado is credited as the inventor of the stereo moving coil phono cartridge. He is responsible for more innovations in phono cartridge design than any other person in our lifetime and was inducted into the Audio Hall of Fame in 1982.


Time-honored manufacturing know-how and painstaking attention to design detail result in previously unattained levels of pitch control, harmonic accuracy, and bass quality to be achieved.


All Grado headphones and cartridges are handmade to Grado's full performance specifications... nothing leaves the factory unless it sounds pure Grado.


The Grado Reference Series of wood-bodied cartridges are of a fixed coil design and handcrafted from a specially selected species of mahogany from Australia, Jarrah. The body undergoes an intricate procedure of curing between production steps to maximize sonic quality. Each cartridge is hand-assembled and tested for frequency response, channel output, channel balance, phase linearity, inductance, and resistance. This meticulous care in design and construction lavished on each Grado cartridge contributes to an unchallenged consistency of performance and guarantee of reliability.
 

Each model employs Grado's proprietary Optimized Transmission Line Stylus/Cantilever(OTL), which provides an ideal transfer of the signal from point to point, e.g., stylus to cantilever to magnet to coils, etc. This has been achieved by eliminating resonance at each of these key junctions. The transmission line cantilever consists of separate sections that are telescoped into each other. All sections are made of different alloys, some sections hollow, other sections solid. These sections are bonded together with materials that act as dampers and are coated with a black proprietary material that controls and absorbs resonance which travels on the surface of the cantilever (known as skin effects). The OTL stylus/cantilever design will make your records sound quieter, improve the height, width, and depth of the soundstage, and offer more detail than previously obtainable.
 

The Reference series output is 4.0mV while the Statement series yields an m-c like 1.0mV. Grado achieves this by changing the coil configuration. Each cartridge has four coils, but Reference cartridges have 6,000 turns on the coils, while the Statements have only 380 turns. According to John Grado: 'Since we have considerably fewer turns in the Statement Series we can use a much larger size wire, thus knocking resistance from 470 ohms to 2 ohms in the Statement Series. This new wire has over 16 times more area for carrying the signal: this also shortens the distance the signal must travel from 125ft to a little over 7ft. In the Statement series, we have also shortened the magnetic gap, increasing the flux density.

Master V2 -

The newly redesigned Master 2 cartridge features a revised coil resulting in a 17% reduction of the effective moving mass of their generating system. The hand-assembled generator is  housed within a machined Australian Jarrah wood housing. The Master1 and Reference1 models use a five piece OTL cantilever technology achieving an additional 5% tip mass reduction over the Platinum V2 and Sonata V2 models. The Master V2 model is fitted with a nude elliptical diamond.
 

SPECIFICATIONS:

OUTPUT:
Reference - 4.8mV @ 5 CMV (45)
Statement -  1mV @ 5 CMV
CONTROLLED FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 10-60 kHz
CHANNEL SEPARATION: AVERAGE 40 DB - 10-30 kHz
LOAD: 47,000 OHMS
INDUCTANCE: 40 mH
RESISTANCE: 600 OHMS NON SENSITIVE TO CAPACITIVE LOAD
CHASSIS MASS: 10 GRAMS
TRACKING FORCE: 1.5 - 1.9 GRAMS