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

Hi inna,
Your Redgum is a very low 10kohm input impedance, which could trouble some sources that have high’ish output impedances (eg >1kohm) this could be your problem if you phono stage is >1kohm.

I can’t find what the output impedance is of your Phono stage is, but I did find out just one of the few AcousTech phono stages, was designed by Ron Sutherland .

I just found this if it's your model.
"AcousTech Electronics PH-1 phono preamplifier "
" Recommended load: 10k ohms or greater"

You are right on the min, with the 10kohm of the Redgum if this is your Phono stage.

Cheers George

George, thank you very much. Yes, this is my phono stage. You see, the sound is not exactly lean, it is just not full enough.
So, I understand that increasing the amp's gain is a questionable idea that may do more harm than good. It's either putting active preamp between phono and Redgum or living with it as it is.

Inna, have you tried the two different cartridge loading options, as I remember back to the Supex SD900 days it preferred 10ohm loading to 100ohms as the 100ohms made it sound a bit too rounded.
You have plenty of output with the PH1 as it can give out 8v!!!, more than enough to clip any power amp, so you definitely don't need more gain with an active preamp.

Quote Stereophile on the PH1:" Input impedance: 100 ohms in parallel with 0.01µF (MC), or 47k ohms in parallel with 200pF (MM).

Cheers George

Gain does not affect body. In fact it can add quite a bit of noise.

What you want to do is increase input impedance.  You can do this with a high quality transformer, but not sure where you'd get one off the shelf.

Best,


Erik

erik_squires804 posts09-22-2016 1:58pmGain does not affect body. 

In reality gain (in pounds :-) directly and surely affects body. To test it, switch to ice cream, apple danish with coca cola few times per day or more and drive-thru adventures via famous American food chains to experiment on body and gain.

Aside from humor, gain is important to reach necessary signal strength. If it's insufficient, than there will be an insufficient body. Gain must be increased either at source or preamp level. Gain of poweramp will affect the output power, but if there's not enough input signal, this gain obviously won't affect body or even if it will it may not be to the benefit of sound quality.