Help me pick a phono, pre and cart

I read earlier on that you have to replace the arm on the 1200G.  Not  true.  The arm on the 1200G is very very good.  If you wanted to pursue a different arm that may be better such as a Triplanar you certainly could but you may find that the arm on the 1200G may just work for you.  I would replace the platter mat and headshell/headshell cables.  I love the arm that comes with the 1200G and I am very picky.  It took me 5 years to find a table I liked.  I found it with the 1200G.  I cannot see how it can get much better for the money.

Hm. Sounds like raul is a bu$ine$$man looking to sell his preamp, but actually prefers digital (I didn't make that up):
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/phono-preamps-with-balls

Here's an excerpt from that thread:

A CD with a top DAC ( 32bits/384 khz.) and good overall design outperforms any phono stage it does not matters the phono stage price/pedigree ( including yours. ) in the bass " management " and this is not because your unit or other units are not good designs because I know your design is a good one but it’s because the differences between a digital and LP recording technics.

The recording microphones pick up all the music in stereo including the bass range but for the LP overall limitations the low bass comes not in stereo as when in the recording but in mono way when in digital comes as what were pick up by those recording session microphones, digital has no limitations about.

That is one of multiple reasons why digital outperforms LP/analog in the bass no matter what.

I repeat, it’s not your quality unit design but the " medium " limitations. No contest by analog in this regards against digital.

-and yet he calls me a liar for it.


As I said on that thread, I've yet to hear a digital system at any price have more bass impact than analog. Raul misses a key ingredient here- its probably not that digital hardware is inherently inferior in this regard. What raul doesn't seem to understand is the industry is the problem- CDs are expected to be played in a car so they are compressed as a result. LPs have no such expectation and so have less compression or none at all. This results in more bass impact.

Btw, my unit is 3190 after 3 up-dates from the 3160 version.

Latest up-date was two months ago and when I was thinking my unit can't be improved any more. I was wrong about.

Things are that like 5-6 years from now I bougth some parts for my unit to test it and see what happens but I did not made the changes on those parts because it's way time consuming to make parts up-grades to a SS four layers boards as in my unit. So I did not nothing and forget about.

Well, looking in all my audio stuff suddenly I seen those parts that I already forgot I had and this time I made the change and fortunatelly was and is for the better. 
I can say that " everything changed "/improved due that today exist no unit/system noise floor level, we can't detect it not even when the system starts switch on: we can listen nothing but dead dead silence as if the system were switch off. I even check at each speaker single driver ( efficiency/sensitivity 95dbs. ) with an stethoscope and no sound at all! ! !

That kind of non-existent system noise floor changes for the better the overall listening experience as ever before. Forgeret about black  blackbackground,  I'm talking of an order of magnitud different: non-existent system  noise floor at all. Astonishing !.

R.

Yes, the unit selector in phono MC position and attenuator wide open.

R.