Reference4

Reference4 is a wood-bodied moving iron cartridge from the Grado Timbre Series. It uses Joseph Grado's flux-bridger principle, in which the coil structure stays fixed while a low-mass moving element generates the signal. The stylus is a nude Shibata diamond on a machined boron cantilever, and the body is made from American Osage wood.

The internal signal path uses 6N OCC copper. Each cartridge goes through cryogenic treatment and internal damping to limit resonance. The housing has been reshaped to give a better view of the cantilever during setup, which helps with alignment and fits a wide range of tonearms. The cartridge is not sensitive to capacitive load.

It comes in high-output and low-output stereo versions to suit different phono stages, plus mono variants of each. The mono versions are special order and non-returnable. Owners of another Grado wood cartridge can use the Wood Cartridge Upgrade Program to move to a different model at adjusted pricing.