I'm not at all active in these forums, but it's miserably hot outside and I stumbled onto this. I have owned a VTPH-2 for nine years and am very happy with it. Keith is great to work with. My configuration may be of some use. I use Keith's interconnect, phono to pre-amp. Current tube configuration: 4 Mullard 12ax7's, JJ 12at7 all new, not NOS or vintage. The Mullards are the warmest of anything I've tried, and I've tried EI's Ruby's and others. That being said, the Mullards are not soft or syrupy, just a good match for the rest of my system. The JJ 12at7 is a great value for the money. I've tried fancy NOS Mullards and a cryo Gold Lion in the 12at7 slot and always go back to the JJ. Most notable is it's bass reproduction. Much tighter. My VTPH-2 sits on three original Stillpoints, two with points down, one with points up. The last tweak I've made, and one that really stabilized the presentation was a rack mod. I have a VPI rack, sand filled. The phono stage sat on a 1" thick maple shelf that rested on the second rack, held down by gravity with two VPI bricks resting on the shelf. Seemed less than state of the art given all the attention racks are getting these days. So, I cut eight slots in the shelf and looped metal hose clamps through them, looping them them around the racks front to back struts. I put a strip of fo.Q tape between the shelf and the rack bars and then tightened down the hose clamps, hard, squeezing the shelf down onto the rack/fo.Q tape. Imaging went from acceptable to nearly rock solid. That was confirmed when I had some guys over to play pool, which I do about once a month. I had to run them out at 2:00 AM, they were still making requests. That had never happened before. Cartridge/tonearm/TT Lyra Delos, ET II ,VPI TNT jr. Oh yeah, I use Herbie's tube dampers too.
