Would increasing the gain in the amp give more weight to the sound? Any negatives?

What cartridge are you using? And how long is your phono cable?

The reason I ask is that the relatively high 200 pf input capacitance of your phono stage, in combination with the capacitance of your phono cable (which is proportional to length as well as being dependent on the capacitance per unit length of the particular cable), and the capacitance of the wiring in the turntable, will be too high a total to be optimal with some MM cartridges. In those cases the result would probably be an over-emphasis of parts of the treble region, which could be perceived as an under-emphasis of lower frequencies and consequently as a lack of body.

Also, btw, I’ll mention for possible future reference that the 0.01 uf (10,000 pf) input capacitance of the PH-1 in LOMC mode, which George referred to above and which is confirmed in the PH-1’s manual, frankly speaking strikes me as absurd. While LOMCs are of course less sensitive to load capacitance than MMs, low capacitance is generally preferable with them (see the post by Lyra cartridge designer JCarr dated 8-14-2010 in this thread), and 10,000 pf is **extremely** high. Although presumably the high capacitance was necessitated by some aspect of the design of the phono stage.

Regards,
-- Al

Al, the cartridge is Goldring 1042, and the cable that goes from the cartridge right into the phono input is about 1.5 meters long, The cable from phono to the amp is 1 meter long.
Never tried LOMC with it so can't speak. Why would Sutherland do, as you say, nonsense?
Turntable set-up is doing alright.

The Goldring 1042 has a recommended load capacitance of 150 to 200 pf. Unless you are using a phono cable having particularly low capacitance, I would guess that the 1.5 meter cable probably has a capacitance in the area of 150 or perhaps even 200 pf, which means that together with the 200 pf input capacitance of the phono stage the cartridge is probably seeing close to twice the recommended load capacitance. So that could very possibly be a significant contributor to the problem.  On the other hand, though, I note that you indicated that recordings made from records sound fine.

Regarding the reason for the 10,000 pf input capacitance in LOMC mode, as I said it was presumably necessitated by something about the particular design. To hazard a very speculative guess, perhaps the circuitry is particularly sensitive to radio frequency energy, and perhaps a 10,000 pf capacitor was therefore placed at the input to provide a very heavy load at RF frequencies (the impedance of a capacitor decreases as frequency increases, and hence the loading it presents becomes heavier as frequency increases), that would filter out any such energy that might be generated by the cartridge (LOMCs have bandwidths extending up into the RF region) or that may be picked up from some other source.

Regards,
-- Al

Al, this is interesting. I have no idea of the capacitance of the Nottingham arm's wiring. Assuming that you are right that this does contribute to what I am experiencing, how would you explain the fact that when running the phono thru the deck I don't have such a problem, I only got slight drop in resolution and soundstage. And it's not only the deck, it's also an additional cable, by the way. Cables from both phono and deck are Purist Audio.

The deck maybe 47k and loading the phono stage differently to the 10k of the Redgum.

Cheers George