$3000 Upgrade Dilemma: My Next Purchase


My analog front end is older, but good: Alphason Sonata turntable with Alphason HR-100MCS titanium arm (with Van den Hull silver wiring) and a beautiful sounding Madrigal Carnegie One low output MC (0.28mv) cartridge. It's connected to a Tandberg 3008A preamp w/phono stage and an Electron Kinetics Eagle 2A amp (remember John Iverson?) and finally, Thiel CS2s. Also, for when my wife is sleeping... a Ray Samuels Raptor tube headphone amp and AKG 702s.

Here's my dilemma: I want to take a quantum leap in sound quality, especially in the areas of overall musicality, inner detail, soundstaging and air around the instruments. And, I recently fell in love with the tube/vinyl combo after 30 years of stubborn solid statehood. And, the Tandberg's attenuator is crackling and popping like breakfast cereal again, and I'm tired of wasting money trying to get it fixed. So...

With $3000 to play with in Audiogonland... do I:

1. Buy a superb, quiet outboard tube phono preamp and use the Tandberg as Line Stage until I can replace it?

2. Buy a tube Preamp with a superb built-in phono stage (does one exist?) to replace the Tandberg?

Any suggestions will be very appreciated, especially about specific gear. Keep in mind that the phono stage will need at least 65 dB of gain to drive my cartridge.

Also, does anyone know of a phono stage with two sets of single-ended outputs? I'd love to be able to use one of them to go directly into the headphone amp, bypassing the line stage completely!

Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom and experience.
Ag insider logo xs@2xalonski

Showing 1 response by weiserb

If you like vintage Tandberg the 3018 is a big step up and the upgrade price is about $500.00 next step is a preamp from CJ, BAT or ARC with built in Phono and some have remote

Then get a pair of Aerial 9's for 4-4500 and hopefully you can get some money from the thiels.

One catch the Aerials need 200 watts min to sound awesome