So ya, the Opus3………
Just about 20 hours in and I have really been enjoying this cart. I hesitate when saying something sounds good “out of the box”, but the Opus3 did and it just got better over time. The sound is dynamic, full, spacious, and clear, the highs are impactful without being bright, the lows, tight, present and smooth and the vocals are clear and accurate. This is going to be a little drawn out, but there is a reason.
The Opus brought back that “warmth” that I was missing, so much so, I’m putting off upgrading my tubes until next year, lol. This cart is light, really light, so everything needed to be calibrated, we’re sitting at a VTF of 1.75 (1.6-1.9 recommended) and we had to move the pre up to 50db since I opted for the Low Output model. It tracks really well, dead quiet, it’s musical, lively and put out amazingly well across different pressings, from MoFi to crate grabs, if the album was clean, it delivered…obviously better pressings yield better results, MoFi’s Abbey Road sounded fantastic.
This Opus has checked off all
my boxes,
@HiFi Guy and I have had some long conversations about equipment, carts and what not and I even told him I think I found “THE” cart for me….which says a lot and brings me to the real interesting part of our discussion that I want to share.
Grado’s Opus3 lands in an interesting position, it is the entry level wood cart in the Timbre line, but there is some math to be done here. What would be helpful would be an A/B with the Grado Gold v3, why? Because of the staple question most of us ask, “Is it worth the price difference?”. Usually we’re talking about a jump of a few hundred dollars or more, so the question has solid merit. But when the difference is $15, I gotta be honest, the point becomes a bit mute. If the Opus shows any audible improvement (
most likely "different") compared to the Gold 3,
that $15 would probably be worth the price difference. Also, the argument of user replaceable styli has factored into this comparison, well, again, with the prices of each being what they are and Grado offering a trade in credit of 30% on the Opus, a new styli or trade end up within reason of each other. For example, an 8MZ will run $150, while the Opus trade in $192, to me, all this falls into negligible amounts, I stress, TO ME, everyone’s finances and what they deem to be “a lot” are going to be different. All that being said, down time is also a factor, for me, I have backups and a second system so its not as big an issue.
I wanted to bring that up because the Opus really delivered in my opinion, in the past I’ve always kind of wondered what’s up the product line, but of course that usually meant a big jump in price, and once again, is it worth the dollar to sound ratio, with the Opus I’m feeling really satisfied, its really giving me the sound I was looking for and I’m feeling kind of like when I got the Prima Luna, UltraDeck and Insight……..I’m good. Ya, ya, I know what you’re thinking
So ya, I think Grado delivered a solid product at an attractive price point and definitely hits the “Bang for your Buck” mark. As always, these are my opinions, your mileage may very based on a lot of factors, most importantly, your own ears. Like I said, my only “burning” question at this point would be the comparison to the Gold v3 just to have a point of reference, but if I never find that out, I’m still perfectly content.
Hope this helps, most likely it will muddy your decision making more, so I do apologize, lol. if you have any questions, have at it, I’ll do my best to answer them.
