Spending far more on amp than turntable?

[Hifiver]

Have you or would you ever do this?

Does it make sense, instead of upgrading the turntable?

My dealer once recommended an Accuphase amplifier to go with my Well Tempered Lab Simplex 2 turntable. I heard one attached to my deck in his store and was astonished how great it sounded.

Accuphase are £5k upwards and my turntable is £2k.

Advice please?

 

[Jasonovich]

I'm not sure where I sit on this, my opinion changes like the British weather.
Back in the 80s, the WHF publication would advocate the source, what comes in, is what comes out, i.e. turntable was king and everything else in the system was secondary.
Mind you I think the Linn clan did much to shape that opinion.

WHF has long shifted it's position, flavouring speakers followed closely by amplification.
My personal view, I think the system needs to be balanced.
A turntable costing £80 won't do justice to an amp and speakers costing in excess of £5k.
Yeah it's about ♎ balance 🙂

 

[RoA]

I guess the further up you move the less it matters.

 

[skinnypuppy71]

My Avid ingenium plug and play sits well with my near 6k rrp Electrocompaniet eci6 mkii, although I confess it has had a few upgrades and is now more in line with a 3k turntable, After it's latest mod. Rega rb700 tonearm( bought a couple of years ago) has been off to Southampton for the Origin live structural mod and full rewire, it's came back a totally different unit.....for the better I might add...well chuffed with it.
I'd says it matters slightly less these days as technology has moved on, I'm pretty sure it was a different world in the 70's and 80's regarding turntable quality, but the newer models from Rega,Project are very capable, just don't throw in the cheapest turntable package with a high quality Amplifier..... and get the oe cartridge sold ( in most cases) they're usually not up to the standard of living with a amplifier at this level.

 

[daytona600]

Accuphase are £5k upwards and my turntable is £2k.

£4.5k for a TT , £500 for a RCM Source 1st " Rubbish in Rubbish out "

 

[Al ears]

@Hifiver , I cannot reply to your direct message as that facility has been withdrawn for member to member messages, not sure how you managed to send one

 

[busb]

Accuphase are £5k upwards and my turntable is £2k.

£4.5k for a TT , £500 for a RCM Source 1st " Rubbish in Rubbish out "

That was Linn's sales pitch when they were only selling turntables! My personal belief is to upgrade the weakest link whatever that might be & only if it improves the sound enough to justify the cost.

 

[Fandango Andy]

Have you or would you ever do this?

Does it make sense, instead of upgrading the turntable?

My dealer once recommended an Accuphase amplifier to go with my Well Tempered Lab Simplex 2 turntable. I heard one attached to my deck in his store and was astonished how great it sounded.

Accuphase are £5k upwards and my turntable is £2k.

Advice please?

I'm not sure you can make it about money. Some components punch above the weight, others aren't worth the price. As @Jasonovich says, its about balance.

The speakers are possibly going to make the most difference, but they have to be appropriate for the room. The amp needs to be in the right power band to drive them. If you put aside the alchemy that some components just work really well together, your system is going to sound as good as your weakest component. If you improve your amp, you may get more out of your record player, but you won't make it sound better than it is. You are always going to hit the limit of that weakest component, until you hit a real limit, the limitations of your room or your hearing.

What is the amp you are considering improving from? What speakers do you have?

Then you get to the record player itself, firstly there is one simple upgrade, the cartridge, do you have the best appropriate to your player? I don't think it is out of the question for a £2,000 record player to match a £5,000 amp.

 

[plastic penguin]

You need to spend roughly the same amount on every component. No point having a 10k amp if your table is sub £1000.

My amp was worth, according to retailers at the time, around £1300. My table was roughly the same amount, speakers were £1600.... the only component cheaper is my Exposure CDP, when new, was around half the amount of the table.

 

[Entrigo]

Excellent question and good to hear people positions on this. I have been recently debated a similar (*) dilemma, having upgraded my turntable, which now has upset the balance in my system - as I agree with the proponents of the balanced approach.

But, as @Fandango Andy mentioned, some components do punch above their weight, and prices fluctuate so that just using RRP is hardly an exact science...

In my case, I now find myself with a near £3k turntable matched to amp and speakers which are roughly around £1k each.

My initial thought was to upgrade the amp (cue overly technical discussions on power ratings at various impedance levels to determine which amp has the better grip on speakers) - but also I believe the speaker first theory has some weight. If your turntable set up is able to dig out enough information, if the phono stage is capable of transmitting that with enough fidelity, possibly a combination of a "sufficiently capable but not necessarily super duper" amp and higher end speakers capable of rendering that information in finer detail would be preferable to a better amp/average speaker combo?

Going back to the component punching above their weight, synergy etc - in my case I never really felt the need to upgrade my £1k Focal Aria - which were actually £700 when I bought them only two years ago - as I think they work great in my space. Although I'd love to see what a more capable speaker could do, I can't see any others in my budget range that would fit the bill in terms of sound signature (detailed but definitely not bright and with "boogie factor" as I do listen to a lot of rock, funk, etc) and positioning (awkward room, so ideally need front-ported) to justify a serious money outlay. In a "money is not an object" scenario, I'd have the Proac D2R tomorrow, but in the real world, they'd be a serious stretch , as they are £3.6k new...

* obviously that was a work in progress comment which I also obviously accidentally published 😆