Replacing a Grado Prestige Stylus

[kcherney]

I am having trouble replacing my stylus on my cartridge. I have the matching Grado Stylus/Cartridge but feel like I'm going to break the Cartridge if I try and pull the old stylus out. I don't have any experience or instructions, just guesses. Help please!

[MosfetOwner]

The Grado Prestige series are unique in that Grado supply a special plastic tool, which is shaped like a tuning fork, with each cartridge to remove the stylus. I have one for my G+ cartridge, along with Grado’s instructions on how to do it. If the cartridge is on its back, with the stylus facing away from you, the tool is clicked on at the rear of the stylus, with the two “tuning fork” legs going down on either side of the cartridge. Then the tool is pulled straight out, up and back towards the rear of the cartridge to release the stylus. It pulls out at about a 45 degree angle to the bottom of the cartridge, towards the rear and up (with the cartridge lying on its back, remember). It actually comes out at roughly a 90-100 degree angle to the stylus cantilever, so it’s quite strange. I assume that if you don’t have the tool, you can probably still do it by pulling the stylus up and towards the rear of the cartridge, but can’t try it out as I have mine in storage at the moment, and I don’t want to get it out. Besides, I might damage something – I’ll let you try it out!!

A local Grado dealer, if you have one, may be able to help you, and may be prepared to lend you the tool if you take your cartridge in to them. I’ve never come across any other cartridges with replaceable styli that need a special tool like that, so presumably the Grado family are a bit eccentric! If you search around you may be able to find a cartridge instruction sheet somewhere on the web for Grado cartridges, describing how to do it. I had a look on the Grado website http://www.gradolabs.com , but couldn’t see one there, and the Australian agent didn’t have one on their website either, but possibly a dealer or distributor somewhere may have one that you can download to see how to do it. Unfortunately Grado seem to be committed more to producing good cartridges, than providing good, readily available instructions. The instructions for mine don’t even tell you how to put the new stylus on, although they do describe how to get the old one off.

[bobhayes]

I have a Grado cartridge which I found on the side of the road on a crappy Akai turntable. It had no stylus so I bought a new one.
I just pulled it out with the two little 'flanges' which stick out the sides and it came out no problem... maybe a little stiff.
I pinned the cartridge down (stylus side up) with my thumbs and levered it out with my finger nails.
I'm sure using the correct tool would be better, but you can do without it!

[kcherney]

I got some instructions from the Grado people after I had e-mailed them. It was simply just pretty stiff. It had presumably been on there for quite some time. I was not sure how strong the cartridges are so I didn't want to force it.

Thankyou!