Soundsmith Strain Gauge - Thank You!

Good grief, Miller thanks someone!!!!!

Twice in the same thread.

What's come over him?

@miller-carbon
I’m quite familiar with spiritofmusic who hangs with the top high-end relatively expensive crowd but on a more limited budget. He squeezes the maximum amount of performance from his gear and carefully chooses upgrades that maximizes his $. A report cites the sonic progression of his audio system from good to great. His earlier recommendation of Sablon cables and IIRC the Degritter RCM as high price/performance was spot on. Kind of wished I rolled the dice during the Degritter development to prepay and save $1k. Someday, I hope to also have a dedicated audio room.

Besides the occasional roil with other members, from your accumulated knowledge you’ve given so much to this forum that I wish you the very best in your audiophile journey. I’ll bet you’ll be rocked by the performance of the SG, a major Wow moment and moments to come. Welcome to the Soundsmith Peter Ledermann club, one of the nicest, helpful, most knowledgeable cartridge designers/manufacturers out there.  Looking forward to your report.

Thanks, that is what I'm hoping for. Comparing moving mass between SG and MC (or even MI) are compelling. So is the timing, and not having to amplify 40+ dB for RIAA. It all makes perfect sense, and when technology aligns with actual listener results this usually is the mark of a winner. Last night listening to my Koetsu/Herron all tweaked to the max it is easy to imagine yet hard to believe. Soon we will know. 

Yes waiting for spiritofmusic to chime in. His comments came up repeatedly as I was researching and always excellent useful information. What you said is exactly what I have been going for, hangs with the top-end but on a more limited budget. 

Well the SG came and Holy Smokes what a beast! There are so many cool things about this I am gonna have to devote a whole monster review to it. For now, even right out of the box it sounded quite good. Which is always impressive. Going up against highly tweaked Koetsu/Herron is no small task. I mean, just the power cord on the Herron cost more than the whole Strain Gauge! It is on Townshend Pods, and plastered with so much Krissy magic you can't believe. Even the Koetsu was painted in TC and more. 

So we did the acid test, SG right out of the box on its own feet no Pods no nothing. Even so it was awfully good. Not there in all ways but awfully good. 

SG is a completely different thing than any other. The cartridge does not generate a signal. It modulates input current supplied by a phono stage that is not a phono stage. No RIAA EQ. Consequently the thing can be left on and this seems to pretty much keep the cartridge and everything ready to go. So many great things about this rig! Anyway after last night, got it dialed in VTA and side bias (surprisingly sensitive, just like Peter says!) with it on Pods and TC, OMG I never heard technical accuracy be so draw you in enchanting!