best phono stage to mate with a London Decca Super Gold cart?
UK reviewer Ken Kessler of Hi-Fi News is a longtime Decca devotee, and has praised Glenn Croft many times, including his phono designs for use with Deccas/Londons. And Croft, being intimately familiar with the cartridges, may have his own preferences for loading them with resistance and capacitance. |
Hi
bdp24 , i was curious regarding the below in your post For the best performance from the Super Gold, you want to load the cartridge at 15k to 22k resistance, and 220pF of capacitance.How can this be done for MM Phonos which i believe are internally loaded at 47K. does this involve some bit of DIY ? I have a much older decca hence the interest ! |
I run a Decca FFSS MkIV C4E (rebuilt by John Wright) and Garrott Brothers Gold (retipped by JW). I have been using Deccas since the late 70s. I now use a TRON Seven Reference phono stage, which was built specially for my Decca. Of course, this is way out of your budget. However, I have also tried the budget TRON Convergence tube phono stage (GBP900 = USD1300) with my Deccas. It gets maybe 90% of the SQ of my Seven Reference for a mere fraction of the cost. Graham Tricker builds his units to order, and so you can specify cartridge loading etc at the time of order. |
Over the summer I built a K&K Audio "Trio" for one of Kevin's customers and was very impressed by its performance. It faired very well in comparison to Kevin's all out assault on the SOTA, the Sonus Veritas Venice, a fully balanced differential, transformer coupled unit reviewed here: http://http//www.positive-feedback.com/Issue59/sonus.htm The Trio's sins were sins of omission, not commission (added colorations). I believe an assembled MM version can be had for ~$1.5K. The circuit board is arranged so different loading resistors can be easily inserted. The input capacitance of the input tube and the capacitance of your tonearm wiring should put you in the 220pF ballpark. http://http//www.kandkaudio.com/trio-phono-stage/ |
