Step Up Transformers….Are they Worth the Trouble?

@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 " ?   

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" 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.

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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.

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@lalitk 

Hmmm, what do you think it should run?  Intuitively it doesn't seem out of line to me.  I’d guess at $3k it’s probably about 2x cost of parts (includes attached interconnect to eliminate one set of RCA connectors).  Compare that to EMIA, which is $3400, or Audio Note which is $4k.  I don’t know what transformers they use so hard to compare directly.  Definitely more than most that use Cinemag or Lundahl, but that’s not really surprising is it?  

@mdalton

I wasn’t trying to knock down the HM-7.. just curious about your rationale to choose HM-7 over the other SUT’s in your elite list. There is very little info available about HM-7 online so I am certain you have done your research before pulling a trigger. 

@lalitk 

absolutely no offense taken my friend.  Hashimoto has a pretty legendary reputation (like Koetsu), and I’ve read over the years lots of comments from Koetsu owners re the magic of the combo (like @mulveling for example).  I also have corresponded with Constantin at Atelier 13, from whom I purchased.  He’s a big fan - check out his website, he carries very cool stuff. Oh, and the HM-7 is their top of the line, above the 3 and X.