Transfiguration Orpheus, what step-up

 
Congratulations on acquiring a really nice cartridge. The O needs a good 50-70 hours to begin revealing itself and mine took upward to 120 hours until I thought it well run-in.

I don't use a step-up transformer, so I'm no help there. On several different phono stages I've found 100 - 200 Ohms is a good place to start for resistance. I've finally settled on 170.

Having the stylus azimuth set properly pays big dividends with the Orpheus. If your tonearm allows this adjustment, you can set azimuth with a meter and a test record, or by ear. (Several good threads w/ azimuth discussion.)
 
Tim

Depending on the phono stage and speakers, I find the optimal loading for Orpheus to be 50-150 ohms.

However, I know somebody loading at 47K and thinks it sounds great.

Go figure.

YMMV

Transfiguration retailer disclaimer

I am a relatively new owner of an Orpheus, circa 100 hours of playtime. I have gravitated to a gain of 64 dB using a Sutherland (battery powered) phonostage (i.e. no step-up), 90 ohms resistive loading, ~1.94 g. VTF. I am still fiddling with VTA, with the cartridge mostly in the range of nearly parallel to the TT surface which appears to give a reasonable SRA - and most importantly, the best sound. I agree with Jtimothya above regarding azimuth adjustment. I was trying to adjust the by minimizing crosstalk (1K Hz test tone/ voltmeter) and listening, of course. I found that the azimuth kept changing; not dramtically, but there was more variance than expected. The problem appeared to be the cartridge had really not been fully broken in - I was taking measurements at 10, 20, 30, etc. hours. The variance has gone way down now that I have more hours, so be patient with your adjustments recognizing they may change.

Finally, the "O" sounds awesome - truly a highly resolving, but very lifelike cartridge.

Good luck!

The Orpheus has enough output that you shouldn't need a stepup device with it. Transformers will obscure detail and impact from the cartridge; if you can't get it to work with your phono preamp, I would consider a preamp with more gain as the improvement over the use of transformers is the sort of thing that you hear in 5 seconds flat: its not subtle.

Dear Jesper: I like the Transfiguration cartridges, I owned the Spirit/Temper/temper V-W and heard many times the Orpheus ( but not the Phoenix ).

Its quality performance change depending on the tonearm you match with it and other than the time for broke-inn the Phonolinepreamp is critical to achieve its real quality performance.

IMHO using a step-up transformer ( any ) with the Orpheus ( btw, with any cartridge . ) is like trying to drive a Ferrari in a croos-out-road ( I don't know the right words, maybe non-pave? ), if you want that your Ferrari performs at its best you have to drive that car in the right " road ".

What you are hearing now is not your Orpheus ( at least is only a very poor " shadow " of the quality performance of the Orpheus. ) but the heavy SUT degraded signal and this is a little un-fair for your Orpheus investment.

I agree with Atmasphere, you will be very satisfied when you match that Orpheus with an active high gain Phonolinepreamp ( no SUT external or internal ), the quality differences are so great that you could not believe it.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.