3 Tonearms 1 preamp

I remember talking to one of Stuart Hegeman's technicians back in the early eighties about modifying my Hapi 2. He emphatically advised me that it was a bad idea. It seems that the topography of a preamp is very important and is taken into consideration during it's design. Adding extra RCA jacks and a selector switch might have the effect of creating an antenna to catch stray RF noise from the circuit and ruining the entire preamp. Needless to say, I took his advice. If I were to have 3 tonearms and cartridges, I would get 3 separate preamps. Keep it simple (circuit wise).

Unfortunately, finances are always the impediment. My preamp (Forte 44) has 5 high level inputs, so I could get away with 3 discrete tonearm/preamps. If I were limited to one preamp input, I'd probably swap cables whenever I decided to listen to a different tonearm/cartridge for the cleanest possible sound. Otherwise, what's the point. Besides, how often to you think you'll be swapping? Weakest link in the chain theory carries much significance with me. Cool idea though, 3 tonearms. Much easier than changing headshells.

I have 2 cartridges now, a Grado Signature 8 on a spare headshell and a Grado Reference Sonata 1 that I listen to. I recently swapped back the Signature just to check it out again, but I didn't even bother finishing one side. The Sonata was so much more refined, I'm giving the Signature to my son. I like your approach though, and I plan on trying out other cartridges in the near future. Your turntable project must have cost a lot of money, good tonearms alone aren't cheap, never mind the cartridges. I thought if you were going to the expense of assembling such an instrument, you would want the best possible scenario. In fact, I'll bet you end up with the 3 discrete setups I described earlier or finding a preamp with more than one phono input. BTW, have you considered using a line preamp in front of your main preamp to handle handle phono preamp switching? I picked up a used Acurus preamp from ebay for around $300 recently, it has 6 high level inputs. I own 3 phono sections, all sounding different, but I settled on the one I preferred. The argument could be made some music sounds better on one preamp than the another. I'll bet there's as much character in a preamp as there is in a cartridge. You know, tube vs solid state.

It's obvious to me now. You need a 9 position switch so you can run 3 cartridges through 3 preamps onto your high level input. Then, you can really customize your sound!!!
(took me 3 scotches to have this epiphany). Three is apparently the magic number here!