Moving coil transfprmer?

Tbg,

Sorry for the confusion; the post was for Bbaxley2. He's using the Monolithic.

David

Bbaxley: If transparency, low noise, and low distortion are within your checklist, try a low noise phono stage. Solid state units are best in this department, but you will also find a couple tubed ones with good performance. The idea is to avoid using a transformer; the detail loss, coloration and diminished frequency extremes may be subtle, but they are real.

Regards,

armstrong,i am running it with out denon step up now and i do like it this way.im running it to my arc pre in balanced inputs.adapters are hooked up to out puts of monolithic,it does give me more gain that way,i just noticed it has to be at 12.00 to 2.00 to sound full. i guess its ok like this,im going to listen to it for a while,and maybe get another phono with the higher gain later.it sounds good now,just wondering about the gain

Hi Bbaxley2,

Running with your pot set between 12 and 2 o'clock is a good place to be ... assuming you don't have any noise issues.

It's not adviseable to have way too much gain, only to have to burn it off through an attenuator. Better "just enough" with a bit left over for head-banging sessions than to be running with your pots at 9 or 10 o'lock.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

I personally prefer an active head amp to a transformer. I haven't tried any of the new ones (if there are any), but the Klynes (SK-1 is good, SK-2a is best) come up from time to time at reasonable prices. In tubed units, the Klimo and the Audio Research are also wonderful. I find that an active head amp gives more dynamics than a transformer, and if you match carefully noise will not be an issue. The Klyne head amps in particular give you more options in terms of resistive loading, which is all important if you are using coils. With transformers, as I understand it, either it matches or it doesn't -- there is no flexibility. Good luck!