Help. Wife says Teres 340 Is too bright.

Even later to the party ... heed Doug's observations and revisit your entire signal chain.

I strongly suspect that you are shooting the messenger (Teres / O-L / Benz). With your new vinyl rig, you have a lower noise floor which yields increased dynamics (bot micro and macro). You're going to hear a lot more - both good and bad, and this demands that you sort things out.

Amongst other things to try, I would not hesitate to swap out phono stages (you're running a Wright WPP 100C?). The Wright is a wonderful unit at its asking price, and I'd never argue against someone getting one, but your front end is now getting to the point where it deserves better (and is likely telling you this).

If Raul joins this thread, he'll correctly expound on the possibility that the energy being put out by your front end is resulting in input overload on your phono stage. This can sound like tracing distortion, but can also mask itself as other distortions. The phono stage is something you'll want to eliminate as a possibility.

I have no experience with your C-J amplifiers, but I'd heed Doug's advice on this as well.

Did I mention to get an arc protractor?

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Thanks Tom. i am a firm believer in the necessity of a good phono preamp. You may be right about the Wright though it too has been a very good preamp. Even so, i understand that the chain is no better than its weakest link.

I agree with Doug. Before chasing down tweaks, go borrow a good tube amp. The CJ is a mismatch with the easy to drive Silverline speakers. The better resolution of your new table has exposed the mismatch, probably both in terms of distortion and odd order harmonics.

When looking for a tube amp for the Silverline speaker, you don't have to look for a high power tube amp. Since the Silverline is easy to drive, I do recommend looking for one with low or no negative feedback. Replacing the CJ with a good tube amp in your setup may be a revelation.

Do this excercise before changing the arm, cartridge, mat, etc.. IMHO, of course. Jeff

Dear Artemus5: I would like to add some thoughs on the subject.

I don't know which load impedance you are using, due to its very low internal resistance ( 5 ohms ) that cartridge will performs ( in a high gain active phono stage ) very good at around 100 ohms. The right load impedance is a critical and important factor to the cartridge can shows at its best. So you have to be sure that your cartridge is loaded right on target.

I have no doubt ( knowing that cartridge. ) that your Ebony is a lot better that what you and your dearest wife are hearing.

Your analog rig has very good stand alone items: TT/tonearm/cartridge, you already pay around 10K for them ( maybe more, I can't be sure ) and you pay that amount because of its high quality performance: why any one ( with al respect to you. ) want to pass that high quality cartridge signal to all those " torment low quality road " that conforms your phono stage/cables and connectors/SUT/more cables and connectors ?

I concur with Doug and Tom that now with a better cartridge signal you need ( at least ) better audio links to process that signal even if change it the load impedance you " solve " your wife's problem.

Dear friend, you don't buy a Ferrari to drive in a " terrain field/land " ( full of stones, deeps, trees and the like. ) or you don't buy that same Ferrari with bicycle tires .

At the end what you want is that that cartridge can shows its real quality performance that today it did not.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

May I suggest that you call Alan at Silverline. He is a very nice guy.

Your speaker is about 93db @ 8 ohms and has a silk dome tweater. It is largely voiced using moderate power to moderately low power tube amps. A friend of mine drives a pair with a 300b amp and uses a lesser benz cartridge and it sounds great. The Silverline is designed to allow you to take advantage of the benefits of low to moderate power tube amps. The CJ is likely designed for 4ohm speakers at less than 90db efficiency. (See the white paper at the Atmasphere website).

Two-hundred fifty-watts of solid state CJ into this speaker is not a good match for the speaker or for the amp.

I don't think a suggestion that you buy vaguely "better" gear is helpful. All your gear is good gear. IMHO, start with a good power match between speaker and (tube)amp. Then go for tweaks, treatments, cables, etc.. Jeff