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SUT's -Looking for one with some meat on the bones

I have Spendor D-7 speakers, with all tubes in my system.  The Spendor's are a little threadbare in the upper mids thru the lower highs in my listening room and I was trying to find a SUT with a little meat on the bones.  My wife runs from the room when I try to spin any LP's.  

  I am using a VPI Classic 3 Signature with a HANA SL cartridge.  I bought the Spendor's solely based on internet reviews, but am beginning to wish I had not.  I have never really cottoned to digital music and these speakers seem to go after that type of sound.   I am a lover of British speakers since the 70's, but these have zero relationship to what made me a fan of the UK sound.  

  Not trying to find a fat bloated sound, but very much miss the sweetness of acoustic instrument, string and vocals.  I may be suffering from oldtimers disease.  Analytical modern sound is not my idea of musical enjoyment I am afraid.
  
mckinneymike
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
To repeat an earlier question, what phono stage are you using? And are you presently using a SUT; and if so what model is it, and how long is the cable between it and the phono stage? (I ask the latter question because capacitance on the output side of a SUT will be presented to the cartridge multiplied by the square of the SUT's turns ratio, and hence much higher than it actually is).

Regards,
-- Al

twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,360 posts
 
@mckinneymike I agree 100% with your evaluation and can confirm from my own listening experience.  I compared the D7s directly against Classic 100s, same room, same system, same (long) afternoon, same music.  For me, the Classic 100s were significantly superior; there was, as the saying goes, a lot more "there, there", and the highs were perfectly integrated in the whole.
mckinneymike's avatar
mckinneymike OP
121 posts
 
almarg,

I am using an Allnic 1201 at this time.  No SUT at this time.
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
The one technical issue I see in pairing the Allnic 1201 with the Hana SL is a relatively minor one, I believe, and one that I suspect is probably not a significant contributor to the specific sonic issues you have described. But it further reinforces the notion that using an external SUT is not the way to go in trying to resolve those issues.

Specifically, the cartridge specs provide a minimum load impedance recommendation of 400 ohms. If you are using the lowest gain setting of the 1201’s built-in SUTs (22 db) the cartridge will be presented with a load impedance of 280 ohms, well under the minimum recommendation. And if you are using any of the higher gain settings of the built-in SUTs that load impedance will be even lower.

And a similar situation would most likely arise if you were to use an external SUT which provides sufficient gain for your 0.5 mv cartridge.

So that is one more reason why as others have suggested it would be best to pursue other approaches to resolving the issue.

Good luck. Regards,
-- Al



three_easy_payments's avatar
three_easy_payments
2,097 posts
 
@almarg  makes a good point here as I know this Hana SL cart pretty well.  My phono stage provides 43dB gain and then I add 18dB with my SUT to bring it up to 61dB. I set the load right at 400 ohms and it sounds fabulous.  I can attest that it sounds pretty lousy at anything below 400 ohms.
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