Grado Aeon4 Phono Cartridge

The Grado Aeon4 is the second-tier reference in Grado's Lineage Series, sharing the Epoch4's nude Shibata diamond and sapphire cantilever combination in a hand-built cartridge that delivers reference-level analog performance. Built around Grado's patented flux-bridger moving iron generator with ultra-high purity OCC copper coils and a Brazilian Ebony housing, the Aeon4 sits between the boron-cantilever Statement4 and the flagship Epoch4 in component grading and voicing. It is available in both stereo and mono configurations.

Key Features of the Grado Aeon4

• Nude Shibata Diamond Stylus: Extended groove contact for superior tracking accuracy and high-frequency detail retrieval.
• Sapphire Cantilever: Rigid and lightweight, preserving transient detail and micro-dynamics from the groove wall to the generator.
• Flux-Bridger Moving Iron Generator: Grado's patented low-mass design combines moving coil speed with the higher output and simpler loading of moving magnet cartridges.
• Ultra-High Purity OCC Copper Coils: Long-crystal oxygen-free copper for cleaner signal transmission and tighter channel balance.
• Brazilian Ebony Wood Housing: Dense hardwood body for natural vibration damping and resonance control.
• Low-Output Design (1.0mV): Pairs with MC-capable phono stages for wider dynamic range.
• Stereo and Mono Configurations: Dedicated mono version with proper vertical compliance for mono records.
• Hand-Built in Brooklyn, NY: Assembled and voiced at Grado's Sunset Park facility.

About Grado Labs

Grado Labs has been building phono cartridges and headphones by hand in Brooklyn, New York since 1953. Joseph Grado, a Metropolitan Opera watchmaker turned audio engineer, founded the company in the back of his family's fruit store on 7th Avenue, hand-winding coils on a watchmaker's lathe and selling cartridges out of the same building. Four generations on, the Grado family still operates out of that same Sunset Park facility, where every cartridge is assembled, tested, and voiced by hand before it ships. The patented flux-bridger moving iron generator system at the heart of every Grado has been refined continuously since Joseph's original designs, delivering the speed and detail retrieval associated with moving coil cartridges while keeping the higher output and simpler loading requirements that made Grado a fixture in working studios and home systems for seven decades.

Flux-Bridger Moving Iron System

The Aeon4 uses the same patented flux-bridger generator found throughout the Grado lineup, refined to Lineage Series tolerances. The moving iron element is the lightest component in any generator type, giving the stylus freedom to track complex groove modulations without the added mass of attached coils or magnets. This translates to faster transient response, better tracking of dynamic passages, and more accurate reproduction of complex harmonics. The Aeon4's generator is hand-selected and tested to meet Grado's Lineage specifications, sitting between the Statement4 and the flagship Epoch4 in component grading. In practice, that means tighter channel-balance matching and lower part-to-part variance than the Statement4 below it, paired with a voicing pass that leans slightly closer to the Epoch4's transparency profile than to the Statement4's livelier character.

Shibata Diamond and Sapphire Cantilever

Like the Epoch4, the Aeon4 pairs a nude Shibata diamond with a sapphire cantilever. The Shibata profile contacts a wider area of the groove wall than elliptical or line-contact alternatives, reading more recorded information while distributing tracking force to reduce vinyl wear. The diamond is mounted nude, meaning the gem itself is bonded directly to the cantilever rather than to an intermediate metal shank, which lowers tip mass and improves the precision of energy transfer at the contact point. Sapphire's rigidity then ensures that the vibrations captured by the stylus reach the generator with minimal energy loss. The combination of the Shibata profile's extended contact area, the nude mounting, and sapphire's transmission efficiency makes the Aeon4 particularly revealing of micro-detail, surface texture, and spatial cues in recordings.

Brazilian Ebony Housing

The Aeon4's Brazilian Ebony body serves as both structural housing and acoustic treatment. The wood's high density provides natural vibration damping, absorbing resonances that would otherwise color the signal. Grado has updated the housing geometry for the /4 generation, refining the profile for improved stability during playback and easier cartridge alignment during installation. The Ebony body also contributes meaningfully to the cartridge's 11-gram mass, which gives most modern tonearms enough loading for secure tracking without requiring counterweight extensions or additional headshell weights. The wood is finished by hand at the Brooklyn factory, and grain patterns vary from piece to piece, so no two Aeon4 housings are identical.

Ultra-High Purity OCC Copper Coils

OCC stands for ohno continuous cast, a copper drawing process that produces a single long crystal structure with far fewer grain boundaries than ordinary copper. Fewer grain boundaries means fewer points along the conductor where the audio signal has to cross from one crystal to the next, which lowers distortion in the low-level signal coming out of a cartridge. Grado uses OCC copper throughout the Lineage Series for the same reason it appears in reference-grade interconnects: the cartridge output is the smallest signal in the chain, and what gets lost or smeared at that stage cannot be recovered downstream. The Aeon4's coils are hand-wound to the same tolerances as the Epoch4's, with channel balance matched before installation in the generator assembly.

Explore the Full Grado Lineage Series

The Aeon4 is the mid-tier reference of Grado's Lineage Series. All three Lineage cartridges share Brazilian Ebony housings and flux-bridger generators, differing in component selection and tolerancing:

• Grado Epoch4 - The flagship, with the tightest component tolerances and most refined voicing in the Grado lineup.
• Grado Statement4 - Nude Shibata diamond on machined boron cantilever, the entry point to the Lineage Series.

The Listening Room Difference

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Grado Aeon4 Specifications