Informations
Product description
The Grado Master4 sits near the top of Grado Labs' Timbre Series, hand-assembled in Brooklyn, New York. It is a high-end moving iron (MI) phono cartridge designed for audiophiles seeking moving-coil speed and detail paired with the rich, natural warmth characteristic of wood-body cartridges.
Core Technologies & Design
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American Osage Wood Body: The cartridge is housed in a handcrafted American Osage wood body. This extremely dense domestic hardwood naturally damps internal resonances without adding excess mass, giving the cartridge its controlled, biological warmth.
- Machined Boron Cantilever: Upgraded from the lower Sonata4 and Platinum4 models (which use aluminum), the Master4 features a machined boron cantilever with a 5-piece OTL (Optimized Transmission Line) assembly. Boron's extreme rigidity-to-weight ratio reduces tip mass, allowing faster transient response and improved tracking accuracy.
- Nude Elliptical Diamond Stylus: Pairs with the boron cantilever to extract deep detail and complex harmonics from record grooves while keeping surface noise low.
- Flux-Bridger Moving Iron Design: Utilizes Grado's patented moving iron generator alongside cryogenically treated, 6N OCC (ultra-high-purity continuous cast) copper coils. This design offers lower effective moving mass than standard Moving Magnet (MM) cartridges.
Specifications
| Specification | Value |
| Generator Type | Moving Iron (Flux-Bridger) |
| Output Options | High Output: 4.0 mV (for standard MM phono inputs) , Low Output: 1.0 mV (for high-gain MC phono inputs) |
| Frequency Response | 10 Hz – 60 kHz |
| Tracking Force | 1.6 – 1.9 grams |
| Channel Separation | ~30–45 dB |
| Recommended Load | 10k – 47k Ohms (Insensitive to capacitive load) |
| Weight | ~9.6 to 10 grams |