Step up transformers
- Thread starter awl
- Start date
Exactly, which is why most manufacturers don't use them and always make excuses about their performance not being as good. If you choose the correct transformer, especially in to a good valve phono stage you can get excellent results, which cuts out a lot of passive and active circuitry in the signal path. It is also well known that with a good SUT you get a musical coherence to the sound that is very hard to beat. Another advantage is that a SUT offers protection to the cartridge as it AC couples the cartridge from any active electronics, preventing any DC from potentially damaging the cartridge coils. I have used internal and more recently external SUT's in all of my TRON phono stages built over the last 25 years. I wouldn't use anything else...
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
/\ " It is also well known that with a good SUT you get a musical coherence to the sound that is very hard to beat"
Exactly the pro SUT propaganda you will read almost everywhere... and incorrect... OK for politeness I'll add IMHO
Show me a SET's and horns etc believer who doesn't claim that SUT's are the ONLY way and I'll have seen a miracle
Exactly the pro SUT propaganda you will read almost everywhere... and incorrect... OK for politeness I'll add IMHO
Show me a SET's and horns etc believer who doesn't claim that SUT's are the ONLY way and I'll have seen a miracle
Have had Whest PS.30RDTSE, Exposure 13 and a few others, I now prefer what I hear with a SUT. Like what GT had described. No hum to sort out but super quiet. I’m not associated to GT, but a new SUT user and believer. Bought a Dave Slagle unit, sublime!
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
The guy who bought the demo headamp from me did so after comparing it to an £800 Hashimoto SUT and preferring the headamp by a considerable margin.
To generalise, SUTs and head amp's operate through a MM stage. So figure that in.
To generalise futher, anyone may prefer any given combination of MC stage/pre/SUT/head amp/MM stage.
Other than that, we are pissing in the wind. Go try, go experiment, go see what floats your particular boat.
To generalise futher, anyone may prefer any given combination of MC stage/pre/SUT/head amp/MM stage.
Other than that, we are pissing in the wind. Go try, go experiment, go see what floats your particular boat.
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Utterly wrong. But yes this is the "accepted wisdom" you will read all over the internet... Like I say it is totally incorrect, like almost all "accepted wisdom" about hi fi on the internet.
There can be vastly bigger differences between the sounds of SUT' "A" and SUT "B" than say between SUT "A" and headamp "C"! As almost always, implementation is everything.
At the >£1400 type mark where SUT's get really good there is in fact little to choose between head amps and SUT's but I'd say the very best headamps just pip it.
Here's the problem -you're comparing oranges to eggplant. Headamps are way more versatile -within a reasonably wide range of cart impedances -they just work. But I only own one: The Lounge Audio Copla offers a front panel pot that allows you to both adjust for cart impedance and gain - from 40ohm@27dB to 300 ohms @9dB gain. I'm impressed with this unit and the somewhat similar controls / functions on the Parasound JC-3jr and Elac PPA-2 that also get used in my system. But I tend to lack imagination -so I've found that while it's boring-using SUT's sold with the cartridges by the cart manufacturers works really well . That's my excuse for owning a couple of Denon SUT's , a Ortofon STM-72, four Sony HA-T10 (which work well for the 40 ohm Denon DL-103 as well as the Sony XL-MC carts ). I own some more SUT's as well-but basically the easy route to LOMC bliss (IMHO) is use the SUT designed for/with the cartridge. A good -even a expensive SUT plugged onto the wrong cart can sound really bad. Add to that - pay attention to the overload margin on your MM phono stage -lots of modern phono stages are pretty sensitive -but the flip side is they may not have a great margin for avoiding overload. And clipping the input of a phono stage is not something you're going to want to listen to.Final point: You will want a low capacitance
cable running from the SUT to your phono input.
cable running from the SUT to your phono input.
Not when they are like hen's teeth, they aren't. All that I can trace about availability of the Copla in the UK is a single sale ad' for a used unit something like 6 years ago. That said, the surprise to me was the price - I had expected 4-figures.
Searching for any head amp', i.e. no model name, online, is a near impossibility as no matter what, you will find thousands of headphone amp's.
As for matched SUTs - the worst that I tried was the Silvercore that was designed as a match for my cart' - admittedly not an OEM unit.
Dowser
Learning to bodge again..
The Croft MM stage is the best I’ve heard, my 2 Linn Asaka’s are the best I’ve heard but as LOMCs do not suit the Croft. The McKinnie head amp is the best way of joining the 2 together I have heard, so much so that I now own 3 (all bought before prices got silly). I’ve tried various SUTs, DIY and off the shelf. There’s no comparison for me, McKinnie wins hands down - it is basically the head amp stage of John Curl’s Vendetta phono design, licensed to one of his technicians who lived here in Switzerland.
This thread reminds me, I have a an Ortofon MCA-76 head amp here to compare to the McKinnie, not really expecting much but I should at least get around to trying it. Anyone ever heard one?
This thread reminds me, I have a an Ortofon MCA-76 head amp here to compare to the McKinnie, not really expecting much but I should at least get around to trying it. Anyone ever heard one?
We will now take that as read with each of your aquisitions...
They come up so rarely that getting any real idea of sale price is tricky, but that seems about right.
Weirdly, there are two listed on EPay UK at the moment, plus one in Japan for nearly £400 (plus the add-ons)
paulfromcamden
Baffled
That's interesting. So there's more to getting a good match than just the step-up ratio?
Arkless Electronics
Trade: Amp design and repairs.
Oh yes! Leakage inductance, leakage capacitance, distributed capacitance in the windings etc etc are can be considered parasitic components and will interact to cause ringing and overshoot on transient signals and treble peaking or sometimes early roll off of top end and sometimes even both ie roll off followed by peaking.
At the other frequency extreme we want lots of primary inductance to minimise bass roll off and associated phase shifts and this works against minimising issues at the top end.... This is why it's so difficult and expensive to produce truly top quality SUT's and valve power amp OPT's.
Very often the best match will involve "non standard" techniques in loading including using Zobel networks on the secondary in conjunction with resistive loading that may be a fair bit away from the standard 47K. This means that for optimum results a specific SUT with specific loading into a specific MM stage and used with a specific cart is the ideal and that the matching will involve use of test gear and knowledge of electronics, ie to conduct frequency sweeps and square wave tests and select precise loading resistance, capacitance and probably Zobel values to optimise for the widest frequency response and minimum ringing on the square waves.
In practise the best SUT's will often manage to keep the worst of all this top end weirdness and unpredictability sufficiently above the audio range for it to matter rather less ie it's still happening and hasn't been properly compensated but it's at say 45KHz... It would still be better to avoid it altogether.
OTOH a headamp can have flat response from DC to 2MHz in the most extreme examples and typically say 5Hz to 150KHz and irrespective of loading. Changes in input loading are not "reflected" to the output and so you can make the load on the actual cartridge whatever the hell you want without issues. On the output side they can have a low impedance without significant reactance and hence will interface with any MM stage without issues and without you needing to think about what the loading of the MM stage is.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
Thanks Jez - very helpful.
