Platinum3 Phono Cartridge

The first step-up from the Opus3, the Platinum3 puts Jarrah wood and a twin magnet system to work for your favorite music.

The Platinum3 is a great example of what the Timbre Series is made for: to start listening to your music with more clarity and depth than you’ve heard before.

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.
- John Grado

The Materials

To make the Timbre Series work as a whole, we created a way for Jarrah, diamonds, and a twin magnet system to integrate with our Flux-Bridge™. We modified our four piece OTL cantilever technology to achieve a 10% tip mass reduction over the Prestige Series and use ultra-high purity long crystal (UHPLC) oxygen free copper wire in the coils. The Platinum3 uses a specially Grado designed elliptical diamond.

Extreme Precision

Grado has combined newly developed coil winding techniques with decades-old disciplines. A new two-step shielding process brings not only exact unison between the four coils but an unobstructed path for a cleaner signal. The music is allowed to travel undistorted through the coils, greatly reducing mechanical noise while improving tracking. There is an extreme clarity over the full frequency range, with absolutely no stridency or shrillness. Precisely hand tipped with a diamond, a great amount of care go into each cartridge we build.

Built from Jarrah

After the Platinum3 cartridge is crafted, it is then placed inside an Australian Jarrah housing. Jarrah is necessary for the majority of Timbre Series with its ability to produce surgically precise clarity without losing any depth. Through a variation of thermal aging processes, the housing gains the ability to better dampen and control the resonant frequencies.

Hand-Built in Brooklyn

Each Platinum3 is hand-built by our team in Brooklyn, as it has been for decades. Fine tuned for everything from entry-level turntables up to the highest-end stereo systems, the solid mass of the wood helps keep the Platinum3 steady and producing the Grado signature