PHONO STAGE

[barrieJ]

Hi all,

Hope everyone had a good christmas. I'm needing a phone stage for my Arcam A90+P90 as Santa got me a Linn LP12 for christmas. I live in the highlands not close to many hifi shops. I was thinking of getting the the Cambridge Audio AZUR 360P at £60 (insadently can only find it at richard sound at £100???) because it pretty much plug and play, also considering Heed Audio Questar mm. I'v costed Arcam A90 phone stage £70 and travel time of over 6 hours but the main reason why i'm reluctant to have the phone stage add is, about 10 years ago i bought an arcam amp had a pre amp switch add to go with the power amp and it sounded terrible.

Any help please??

Ps. I have copied this in to the HiFi forums

System ~ Arcam A90+P90+CD192, Monitor Audio RX6, Linn LP12 (moving magnet)

 

[Lost Angeles]

I would have thought a new LP12 deserved something better than the Cambridge and the Quester is probably a good starting point as it's cost is about 10% of the TT. (I think they recommend you spend at least 10% on the Phono stage) As you live in the Highlands it might be worth thinking about Mail order and give Ian Harrison at Repton Derby's a ring in the new year as he was doing a Trichord Dino for £279 and the one I heard with an LP12 certainly blew my Graham Slee away. He also deals with Heed

 

[Anonymous]

Worth a look???

Clicky

 

[Anonymous]

Another possibility is to go chinese... There is a tube driven phono stage called Yaqin MS-12B.

It gets raving reviews in teh internet and costs about 130-150GBP. I plan to get one.

There is something you should be aware of. They are advertised as compatible with UK power (240Vac), but they are actually constructed for European power (220Vac). This has a negative effect on both transformers and tubes. I recently ordered a tube amp with one of the sellers (tubestein on ebay) and before I made the purchase I contacted him to discuss fitting a 240Vac transformer in there due to UK power. He was actually aware of this issue. And although he insisted that it should be no problem to run them on UK power, he did not shy away of proposing a proper 240Vac transformer to be fitted.

The alternative would be to tinker with it yourself to get the voltage down.

 

[gregory]

Nothing wrong with the Cambridge 640P or the Project phono box 2, both take MM and MC loads, gives you plenty of scope for a cartridge upgrade in the future and will lose nothing much soundwise to the others mentioned. I would agree about a valve pnono stage but not the ones from China, i know some have had good results but i have also heard horror stories of them blowing then you have the problem of sending back the unit at your cost, hmmm, not for me. The ones iv'e mentiond will be more than up to the task of resolving the detail from your Sondek, by the way which cartridge are you using.