[Dynagroove] dj cartridges

[shale at sbcglobal.net]

there was a discussion about cartridges.  just wanted to mention a few 
things about the new line of dj cartridges from Grado 
(http://www.gradolabs.com)

i recently replaced my ortofon dj/nc carts with a set of grado dj-200's 
and cannot say enough good things about them.  for years i been looking 
for the highest fidelity dj cartridges possible for my home studio and, 
like most people (it seems), ended settling with the ortofon nightclub 
for its frequency response.  while the ortofons are pretty good, i was 
never really satisfied with them -- specifically the quality of sound 
they produce.  if you compare them against a well-calibrated record 
player with a good (read: really really expensive) stylus you will see 
what i mean.  anyway, to my ears, the dj-200 comes alot closer to the 
sound that *should* be coming from my wax than any other dj cartridge 
i've tried.  i think the output from the grado is a little less hot than 
ortofon, and definitely less hot than shure m44 (which are great for 
scratching and on big pa's because they make everything loud as hell but 
don't sound that good for me at home) -- but it makes up for that in 
fidelity.  especially in frequencies below about 50hz (i didn't realize 
how muddy the ortofons get after a certain point until i compared them 
with a parametric).  they're less noisy on "quiet parts" of records and 
warmer in the midrange than the nightclub.  maybe a little less crisp on 
the high end but the good thing about that is i haven't noticed very 
much "tinny-ness" like i usually do with some records.  they're also 
eliptical, which theoretically should wear your records down less, and 
while there are eliptical ortofon's, there must be some kind of 
government conspiracy against importing them to the states because 
_every_distributor_here_ carries only the spherical model and they look 
at you like you're an idiot for insisting that they order you the ones 
that say 'e' instead of 's'.  anyway, i could ramble on and on about 
these things but i won't.  if you're a big sound-nerd like me and are 
constantly looking for better sounding crap you might want to check them 
out.  they were only about a hundred bucks each and there's a dj-100 
model for like sixty -- i don't know what the difference is but i would 
imagine the 100's sound pretty damn good too for the price.


stewart (not a sales rep for grado)

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