Much better MM cartridge than Shure V15 IV?

Since you are using Kimber Monocles and the Stirling LS3/5a's have separate bass and mid speaker terminals, what are you using for jumpers?

You have a lot of good going in your system as is. One could argue to go further up the turntable/tonearm chain, but the only weak points I see at present are the interconnects and possibly the jumpers to the treble inputs on the speakers. I have bi-wirable speakers too, and for a long time I bi-wired them, but when I upgraded to a much better single run cable (Zu Audio Libtec, now discontinued), I had to experiment with a wide range of jumpers until I finally hit gold with a matching set of Zu Ibis jumpers. Because jumpers are so short, a fresh set only takes about 15 minutes to burn in, and I found there to be very noticeable differences in midrange and treble quality. By the same token, regardless of Blue Jeans claims, you aren't going to really know what your LP front end is dishing out through a $34 pair of interconnects.

Your quest for more upper octave smoothness and midrange transparency--given the quality of your system overall--indicates a need for better cabling. Check into a pair of Kimber Heroes at least, and a pair of Kimber Select speaker jumpers to match the resolution and quality of your Monocles.

Johnny, The Kimber Monocles were such a surprise to me in terms of what cabling can yield...well worth the investment. so your suggestion to get better interconnects is excellent, particularly establishing the capacitance values to match the cartridge. I'll have to try and find the Pro-ject specs for their tonearm cable capacitance, to complete the picture. I have never considered these values closely, so it's a direction to follow.

I'm using pure silver 10 gauge wire as jumpers between bi-wire terminals. What do you think?

With all these suggestions, I'm going to need some me-time to investigate all of them. Sounds good to me.

Also...if u value speed and transparency...nordost cabling really has few competitors in this regard...one of the few cables that yields immediate rewards...some have claimed its bass shy...I would claim it doesn't exaggerate bass

12-18-11: Sumaato
Johnny, The Kimber Monocles were such a surprise to me in terms of what cabling can yield...well worth the investment. so your suggestion to get better interconnects is excellent, particularly establishing the capacitance values to match the cartridge. I'll have to try and find the Pro-ject specs for their tonearm cable capacitance, to complete the picture. I have never considered these values closely, so it's a direction to follow.

Since you have Monocle XL speaker cables, pick equivalent quality phono or interconnects from Kimber's Select line.

I'm using pure silver 10 gauge wire as jumpers between bi-wire terminals. What do you think?

First replace the Blue Jeans with some interconnects commensurate with your speaker cables. Give them 100 hours or so to burn in. Then see how things sound. This may fix it. My hunch is that the Blue Jeans is adding grain and subtracting transparency and your silver jumpers are spotlighting that. If you replace the interconnects you may find that the silver jumpers are just fine. If you find you still need a little more warmth or fullness, try swapping in some Kimber Select jumpers for the silver ones.

The Kimber Select interconnects will probably take care of it.

if you are are going to bother at all with a Stanton 881, look for the 881s and not the mark II - it is constructed much better w/ nude diamond and accurate azimuth (usually).