New GrooveMaster 4 Tonearm, Listening Impressions
GrooveMaster tonearms have been deservedly popular for many years, offering affordable removable headshell designs with highish effective mass to suit higher quality, and typically medium/low compliance, moving coil cartridges. They have always been great partners for Ortofon SPU cartridges.
GrooveMasters have been in production for many years, crafted largely from smart machined aluminium, with titanium arm tubes and good quality hybrid ceramic bearings. Audio Creative, the makers of GrooveMaster arms, have been extremely proactive regarding constant development, and they have taken on board every suggestion for improvement that we have made, but all the time making small but valuable changes, such as the redesigned headshell collet brought in with the GrooveMaster 3 (GM3) that not only improved rigidity and ‘feel’ but also cleverly added compatibility with fixed shell EMT cartridges, a first to our knowledge.
The GM3 remains in production and is a bit of an audiophile bargain, delivering great sound quality and getting the most from a variety of cartridges particularly lower compliance designs. But, the new GrooveMaster 4 (GM4) really is something else –superficially similar in style and rather more expensive than the GM3, but comprehensively reworked so that all aluminium parts are now machined from stainless steel, with strategic use of gun metal brass and titanium. Audio Creative claim that this use of materials results in an ultra quiet tonearm with very low resonance. More on that in a bit.
All that stainless steel and gun metal does mean that the GM4 is a heavy beast, weighing a minimum of 948g, depending on mounting options, so it’s perhaps not something to put on a very softly sprung suspended turntable design. Like the GM3, the new GM4 employs a titanium arm tube, but here finished to a higher standard, and available in a variety of effective lengths (broadly 9″, 10″ and 12″) and as classic ‘Banana Shape’ or ‘S-Shape’. We believe that Audio Creative will also be offering the GM4 with a straight arm tube option. All length and shape options are priced the same, at £3895 plus mounting options which include a stainless steel ‘Jelco Type’ collar (£95), stainless steel sliding SME-style base (£295), or Audio Creative’s clever and beautifully crafted Rotary VTA Lift (£845) which allows VTA to be adjusted on the fly, should you choose. The GM4 comes with the latest GrooveMaster HS-01 headshell, and all wiring is 99.999% silver. All signal carrying parts, in the headshell collet and mini-DIN plug, are high conductivity pure copper, with cryogenic treatment. Bearings remain close tolerance ABEC7 hybrid ceramic, which means extremely low friction and the GM4 leaves the factory with no perceptible play.
The most obvious physical changes over the GM3 are the new anti-skate control, which is still magnetic but is now much easier to use and with a scale approximating VTF; and the short counterweight is made from a combination of stainless steel and gun metal, sitting on a fine threaded stub for very smooth and easy adjustment. Importantly, the new counterweight is now short and fat, which means it can generally be used on turntables with acrylic covers, like our SL-1200. We like that.
How Does it Sound?
We mounted our demonstration 9” (229mm pivot-spindle) S-Shape GM4 on a modified Technics SL-1200GR turntable, using our own Ammonite Audio SME armboard and Audio Creative’s stainless steel sliding mount. Setting the mounting distance to 229mm was easy using an Acoustical Systems SMARTractor.
Maybe controversially, we chose an entry-level Ortofon SPU#1S cartridge, an inexpensive and somewhat crude thing sporting a very unfashionable bonded spherical tip. But, there’s reason in our apparent madness – SPUs are old-fashioned, very low compliance designs that throw a great deal of vibration energy back into the tonearm, so fit one to a lightweight arm that cannot deal with that energy and the SPU will sound brash, harsh, mechanical and just horrid. But, in an arm that can accept and deal with the energy, like a Glanz MH-900S, the rough and ready SPU#1S suddenly becomes more cultured sounding, more colourful, expressive, and not least quieter in the groove. The SPU#1S is one of the purest SPUs and is a really tough partner for a tonearm, so how did it fare with the GM4?
The SPU#1S is not known for being particularly quiet in the groove but as soon as the tip hit the first LP, there was very low surface noise, immediately noticeable and a bit of a surprise. Next, we found that we felt the need to increase the amplifier volume level compared to the same setup but with a GM3; oddly that did not mean subjectively louder listening levels but rather much, much stronger dynamic contrasts in recordings.
The first LP that we tried was Diamond Mine by King Creosote, which starts off with an ambient recording of voices in a Scottish café, with gently building background instruments. Frankly, this track is just lovely with any turntable, tonearm, cartridge but here with the GM4 the recorded acoustic is quite literally ‘reach out tangible’, shockingly real. The second track builds slowly with a gentle bass line that develops in intensity and texture, and here we were astonished, not just by the GM4’s portrayal of those bass textures, but the subterranean depth of that bass – that was new. The GM4 really digs deep with bass, and always in a controlled manner. And this is with an entry-level Ortofon SPU#1S!
So, on to something much more musically challenging, in the form of Beethoven Late String Quartets, played by the Vegh Quartet in around 1973 (my LPs are Telefunken, but the original release was on Valois, I believe). These recordings are delightful in terms of skilful playing and musical expression as well as the placement of violins, viola and cello. Some of the quartets are definitely musically ‘difficult’ but nevertheless electrifying, and the GM4/SPU#1S combination literally places you on a front row seat facing the players – each instrument clearly defined in a natural, wide soundstage along with the spaces between them, filled with energy. Ortofon SPUs are naturally musically ebullient and do thrive on this sort of thing, but not usually with such refinement and fine detail, yet that is exactly what the GM4 got from the SPU and these venerable record grooves. Truly wonderful stuff, usually only delivered by much more expensive tonearms and cartridges.
Finally, we were curious to see how well the SPU#1S performed in terms of tracking ability, when fitted to the GM4. Now, Ortofon’s own specifications state the lateral tracking ability to be a modest 60 µm, but in the GM4, it sailed through the 80 µm test on the Ortofon Test LP, complained at the 90 µm test, and only gave up with the 100 µm test. We’ve never had an SPU do that before, including this one, and this is testament to the GM4’s extremely stable platform and good resonance control, also highlighted by the unusually low surface noise, even with a cartridge like the SPU not exactly noted for quiet running.
As you can no doubt tell, we are utterly blown away by the new GrooveMaster 4 tonearm. It is beautifully made, beautifully finished, easy to set up and adjust, but ultimately one of the best tonearms we’ve used or heard, at any price. Anyone seeking a high quality removable headshell tonearm should take a look at the GrooveMaster 4.
Our 9″ 229mm GrooveMaster 4 is on dem here, so please call if you’d like to hear it.