Best cost no object tube phono


Hi Agoners,


just upgraded everything to SS Accuphase, loving it and have no intention to go back to tube pre/power. However, I have to admit that I miss a bit of tube sweetness particularly on mid. What is the best cost no object tube phono stage?

Thanks in advance for any advices
uwiikz
These are all child toys. Cost no object who gives a damn phono stage is custom built for you. Choose any designer. Some won’t do for less than $1 million. Too much ? In any case, any aligned and calibrated Studer with master tape dub will outperform any million dollar phono stage along with that funny 300 pounds rotating platter.
Don’t waste your money, even if it is your money. Get any of those for double the cost of your cartridge and that will do it.
And if you want real high performance - that’s tape, my man.
There are a few threads on this. As Raul points out it is very difficult to get very low noise in an all tube phono stage.
Difficult but not impossible. To get low noise with tubes you do some of the same things that are done in solid state preamp- particularly those that have opamps:
1) have a tightly regulated power supply2) use differential inputs3) use effective constant current sources for those differential circuits
In addition you simply parallel tube sections as part of your means of reducing noise.

The reason differential gain stages are used in solid state (and in some tube phono sections) is that for every stage of gain that is differential, theoretically you get 6dB less noise. This adds up- if you have two stages of differential gain, that's 12dB lower noise. But to that theoretical limit the constant current source really has to work.


If you do this then its no worries getting a phono stage to work fine with a cartridge of 0.2mV with gain to spare.
@atmasphere 

I would be interested to know with paralleled tube circuits, how can you ensure the tube sections parallelled are matched, and stay matched over a reasonable time. If they are not perfectly matched, then I would assume smearing of signal occurs.