Step Up Transformers….Are they Worth the Trouble?

@mdalton IIRC Sugano Sr. also used a Fidelity Research arm on his Garrard. Even "just" my FR64fx and 64S are stunning with Koetsu (I have 6 lol) - and I ended up liking them better with all my other brand cartridges, too (ideal mass compliance matching be damned). Modern arms end up sounding a bit "dead" to me.

Your Reed should be awesome anyways (have a friend who recently got one), just saying :)

Your room and system are absolutely stunning btw - and that blue Garrard is almost beyond this plane of existence

Dear @lalitk: I started to post in this thread in the page 2 and from there I was the only person that touched that " equilibrium " not one but 4 times, here the other 3 that confirm I'm in agreeing up on even that no one posted:

" don't try to help the OP and they do not like to analize the whole subject in objective/subjective equilibrium.  "

" Objectivity and subjectivity in equilibrium is the name of my audio " game ". "

" hand tested each part, we don’t let nothing at random everything was measured. Along those chasing " numbers " we made really hundreds of listen tests in several room/system and always testing with the same LP tracks. "

@lalitk obviously that you know that 0.4 db deviaiton in the RIAA of your integrated and that number ( for an SS unit.) is unaceptable but been the design of the 650 was not main focus the phono stage because it's an integrated unit where normally designers look to the amplifier design.

Btw, and after rea ldozens posts by youin the thread you showed not aminimum minimum EQUILIBRIUM. Objectivity just does not exist for you because goes totally againts what you want and these are facts.

R.

@mulveling 

Thanks! Yeah, it’s a cool room even before the tubes warm up, lol!  Love your stuff - I see you’re rocking Hashimoto HM-7s - feels like I’ve stumbled into another good decision with my Swissonor SUT…

@mdalton

I just looked up Swissoner’s HM-7s retail, wondering what’s sort of wizardry commanding such a steep price? I remember seeing an outlet in US with similar Hashimoto tranny’s for lot less.

There does seem to be plenty of opportunities being taken in the past year by an individual, to enter into a Thread a reference to a particular Phonostage that has been a Commercial Sale Item in the past and is once more being made known it is a available as a Commercial Sale Item as of the present or soon to be ?

Some of the following which is Bracketed is seemingly the posts from a individual with a Vested Interest in the Company producing the Phonostage.

With such a knowledge, I am to assume much being said is a cacophony of bias loaded statements to be used as supporting marketing sales spiel.

For myself being one that is an advocate of using a SUT, the sales spiel being purported, is strongly suggesting a SUT is liked by this Model of a Commercially Offered Phonostage, when married up to the MM Input.

The SUT info is sort of confusing for myself to fully comprehend, when the info is seemingly supplied by an individual spending much of their forum time advising on not using SUT's. Does likes to mean a very worthy challenger to the Phonostages MC Input ?   

I know there is regularly references to Translation to American English being a weak point, which leaves the question ?

Is the following what is meant by "analize the whole subject in objective/subjective equilibrium " ?   

________________________________________________________

" don't try to help the OP and they do not like to analize the whole subject in objective/subjective equilibrium.  "

" Objectivity and subjectivity in equilibrium is the name of my audio " game ". "

" hand tested each part, we don’t let nothing at random everything was measured. Along those chasing " numbers " we made really hundreds of listen tests in several room/system and always testing with the same LP tracks. "

 You are right, your 3160 came with the normal gain but the MC2000 it's not a normal output level MC.

___________________________________________________________

It needs 85-86db that the 3180 does it with very low noise, a beauty or through its MM stage that comes with 100k fixed impedance that likes to SUT's.

_____________________________________________________________