DS Audio Grand Master Optical Cartridge

The Grand Master is DS Audio's flagship below the Grand Master EX, the successor to the Master line, and the first DS Audio cartridge to pair a diamond cantilever with a Micro Ridge stylus.

It shares the beryllium shading plate and Ultra Duralumin body of the Master 3, but its equalizer and power supply are fully separate units built with custom film capacitors, non-induction winding resistors, and large capacitor banks, with three transformers each rated 1.5 times more powerful than the original Master's.

DS Audio cartridges are optical rather than moving coil or moving magnet: LEDs shine through a shading plate on the cantilever, and the stylus's movement in the groove modulates the light reaching a pair of photodiodes, generating the signal directly with no coil and no magnet. The output is not a standard RIAA phono signal, so it requires a matching DS Audio equalizer rather than an ordinary phono preamp — the equalizer also powers the cartridge's LEDs over the same cable.

Equalizer-alone pricing is not published; call to confirm before ordering an equalizer on its own.

Cartridge

Grand Master Equalizer

• Pricing not published separately — call to confirm