Phono Preamps with "balls" ?

Not you again ! ! !  and in this regards: wrong again because I'm not talking of " bass " but the meaning of " balls " in a phono preamp due that if exist that " balls " characteristic " ( other than bass. ) that belongs to the whole home room/audio system.

@atmasphere , your post makes no sense especially when you have not the rigth audio system to listen the huge differences in digital vs analog and when you did not yet all the tests I suggested in this thread.

Btw, a " phono preamp with balls " is something as any audio item in a system: cartridge with balls, cables with balls, room with balls, amps with balls speakers with... or .....

R.

gentlemen,
"balls" in this case means gusto, drive, dynamics and power.  these are definitely qualites that can be associated with phono preamps.  having owned many that were somewhat weak or anemic sounding I wanted to put a list together of some that are the contrary.   

"balls" in this case means gusto, drive, dynamics and power.  these are definitely qualites that can be associated with phono preamps.  having owned many that were somewhat weak or anemic sounding I wanted to put a list together of some that are the contrary.  

With many phono sections the trick is to **not** use a cartridge that is at the lower limits of the phono section's gain limitations. Then almost any phono section will have what you are looking for.

Bonus: if the phono section is stable and has good overload margin, you will hear a significant reduction of ticks and pops, as many of those are caused by oscillation and RF overload caused by the inductance of the cartridge and the capacitance of the cable acting as a tuned RF circuit.

A way to tell that the phono section has stability problems is if you have to load your LOMC cartridge to get it to sound right (IOW the stock 47Kohms should be fine). The loading detunes the RF circuit and prevents it from injecting RFI into the preamp. But this comes at a price- the cantilever is stiffer, meaning that it will not track as easily. So a stable preamp is important!

Have you tried something like the Manley Steelhead? Hugely dynamic, and with great bass, IMO .

I own both a Manley Steelhead and the Atma-sphere MP1.  They both have "balls", but the MP1 has the bigger cojones, IMO.  As Ralph suggests, I am not only able to load my LOMCs at 47K into the MP1, but they really do sound best that way or certainly with a load R no lower than 1000 ohms.  Below that value, and there's a drop off in dynamics and open-ness of the sound and a slight increase in noise.  Sadly, the Steelhead does not permit running LOMCs at 47K load, unless you connect the LOMC through the MM input. Since the MM inputs can develop up to 65db gain, that's actually feasible.  Don't get me wrong; I do like the Steelhead very much.