Phonostage Burn-in to keep unit sharp


There are phonostage burn-in products out there (KAB, Hagerman, Thor) that utilize your CD player. Most frequently these products are used to speed up the break-in process of your phonostage. But are they worthwhile to use every month or so to improve phonostage performance? I was told doing this is akin to driving your car on the freeway to blow out the carbon. I've yet to buy a burn-in unit. Do you think they are worthwhile?
richardmr
Dear Richard: Yes it is worthwhile to use it to burn-in a new phonostage, when you already burn-in that new phono stage all is done: you don't need to use it any more ( every month ).
The point here should be: how many hours for that complete burn-in?

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.
Hi Richard,

I just bought and received a Hagerman FryKleaner Pro burnin device. The kit was $85 and the parts ordered from Mouser cost another $75 or so. I haven't soldered it all up yet, but should have it done this weekend.

I have a Graham Slee Era Gold mkV + GS Elevator EXP "transformerless" stepup to burn in along with the rest of my system - cables, IC's, TVC, new speaker x-overs, dac, and speker drivers. The whole sheebang.

Luckily, you can hook up everything as one long continuous chain and burn them all in at the same time. If I leave off the speakers, then the rest can be hooked back into the FryKleaner for one continuous loop, speeding things up.

I asked Jim Hagerman how long it takes to burn interconnects, power cords, speaker cables, and preamps?

He responded:
"Usually about 40-50 hours on a FryK. The amps are fastest and get most of the way overnight. Silver wire takes about twice as long as copper."

So, the $150 for this unit is well worth it in my case. I really don't want to run my system at high volume for days(or weeks) to break in things. I'm not sure my neighbors would enjoy that.
Most definitely, burn-in and re-burn-in are very important and all components, more so phono stages, need to relearn how to be musical: think about it, a musician has to practice every day to maintain his chops, same thing for a high-end component since they, unlike run-of-the-mill electronics, have a soul to transcend the laws of physics and bring out the emotion in the music.
Strange that silver, while being a better conductor than copper takes longer to break in! Silver has more latent inner emotions, I guess and that it why it takes more time to release them.
Yesterday I accidentally tuned my FM tuner to a Rap music station and it played through my amplifier for several minutes before I realized what was going on. This caused the transistors to become very traumatized, and I expect that several hours of nice quiet Mozart will be needed before the amplifier sounds good again.
Granite Audio makes a CD you can get from Music Direct. You just plug your CD player into your phono stage, but only track 33 for low output MC.
Just searched for and found this excellent topic with very useful information. Thanks so much to all contributors. Now where did I bury that silver cable and that 50 Cent cd ;-)
Why wouldn't the manufacturer burn in the equipment before shipping.
That way, when you get the item, its burned in. Well, you know the answer know, don't you?
Would using CDP as a "phono preamp cooker" not fry the preamp with it's 2V (or higher) output? Especially when CDP is connected to the preamp input for low output MC carts. If that is not an issue, then I'm gonna do that. I promise not to use the requiem thing for this purpose.

Chris
Be careful here, Chris. I do believe that these devices such as the one Hagerman builds has a circuit board that connects between the CPD and the inputs on the phonostage to drop the signal strength many fold. This is to prevent severly overloading the phono stage circuits. I prefer just playing records to burn stuff in, but if you want to speed this up with one of these CDs, that't fine. However, do look into purchasing one of the products mentioned in the original post.
Dazzdax, yes you can damage the phono preamp with the normal CDP output!!!

It can be avoided by using the Ganite Audo Phono Burn-In & RIAA Test CD (Model #CD-101.1). This CD is specially recorded with the RIAA Frequeny Curve at 4mv for playback through the phono input. This simulates the output level and signal of a MM or MC cartrige.

There may be other products like this as well. I just happened to run into this one at CES.
Kevin at K&K suggested a simple burn in method for transformers(I am not trying to get Raul riled about Step ups). He suggested putting a tuner output through the Ludahl transformers for 2 days, with the phonostge turned off
Hi Richard.

I use a Hagerman Frycleaner reverse RIAA to burn in my step-ups and phonostages. I found that they [step-ups and phono cables] tend to go green after about three months, even when used regularly. The phonostages are not too bad, but step-ups and the phono cable (if you use LOMC) needs a regular burn in.

Burning-in aligns the polarity in the dielectric of the wiring. The very low voltage of a LOMC is not enough to keep it aligned so you need to put higher voltage a signal through to realign every so often.

I strongly suspect folks who dislike step-ups, dislike them because they are unaware that low voltage signals allow step-ups to go (or stay) green and therefore sound quite horrible.

I have not used any of the CD’s that output a phono signal from a CD player as yet, but I suspect it work just as well (and no soldering needed!)

Regards
Paul