Solid State Phono Stages

I am a Tube Device user myself and every so often get the chance to listen to very modern designs for Solid State devices..

Recently I have been offered demonstrations of Two Phonostages, one being the Phasemation E-350 and the other being a model referred to as the 'Avalon', it is  Bespoke Built Design by a very accomplished Electronics Engineer with more than 40 years using LP as their main replays.

Each of these Phon's have made a extremely good impression and very memorable and worthy of informing others about.

Neither of the Phon's are going to break the bank, and the price separation between the Two above Phon's has a decent separation.

Even though the Phon's were not compared side by side, the demonstrations were carried out in short succession and the recollected information was enough to produce a assessment that both were very capable and will need a vast jump in design to be seen as easily bettered.

When encountering either of these Models the impression made might be such, that the need to continue a search further may be vanquished.  

complete don't usually promote products

Most higher end tonearm makers will offer their tonearms with "captive" cables as an option, so you have one wire from cartridge pin to phono input. For sure, this is true for Reed and Triplanar; I own one of each, both with captive cables. Clearaudio tonearms are not unique in this aspect.

Re balanced connection: You really already have a balanced connection, as 99% of cartridges offer a balanced output if the wiring permits.  To connect the cartridge to a balanced phono input, you simply use the "Ground" lead from the cartridge as the negative phase of a balanced signal. Optimally, therefore, you want the ground wire to be a conductor identical in type and quality to the conductor used for the positive phase of the signal.  By convention, the positive phase, aka "Hot" on an RCA connector, attaches to pin2 of an XLR connector, and the negative phase, aka "GD", attaches to pin3 of the XLR. pin1 is then where to connect the shield and any audio ground wire.  Since the internal wiring of most tonearms already uses the same conductors for what becomes Hot and GD in a single-ended connection, all you need is a balanced cable (defined as per above, where the pos and neg phase conductors are equal and terminated in an XLR), and of course a true balanced phono stage. (Be careful of that.  Some phono stages that offer XLR inputs are not truly balanced internally.) Also, you could get away with just re-terminating a single-ended phono cable where ground is carried on the shield with XLRs, but that would be a compromise with respect to optimal.

"Transimpedance".  I really dislike that term, although it is in common use these days to indicate a current-driven phono stage. Because it's misleading.  MC cartridges with high-ish internal impedance, say 20 ohms and higher, are not necessarily so well matched with SOME current-driven phono stages, because those phono stages inevitably have an input impedance greater than zero, and because the current output of the cartridge is a function of its internal resistance. (I know a lot of audiophiles break my "rule" by driving transimpedance stages with say a Denon DL103, which has a very high internal R. That's life.) The lower the internal resistance (and the greater the voltage output) of the cartridge, the more current it can deliver. If I am not mistaken, most current-driven phono stages seem to consist of an input stage that converts current to voltage. Then the downstream circuit functions much like any other phono stage.  The I to V conversion is best done by a solid state device. Hence most current-driven stages are at least hybrids or fully ss.  If it were me, I would check on the input impedance of any current-driven stage before purchase.  Ideally you want the Z to be as close to zero as possible.

@lewm 

I know a lot of audiophiles break my "rule" by driving transimpedance stages with say a Denon DL103, which has a very high internal R. That's life.

A great excuse for them to consider the upgraded “R” version DL103R (14 vs 40 ohms). Lower impedance equals more current & music in these types of circuits 👍

@thiefoflight hopefully you do get to demo the 810lp, it fits your characterization of 'SS with personality' from my experience. I represent a solid state phono from Germany called the Audiospecials Phonolab and had it in a comparo with the ( more costly ) Moon. Both are fantastic, but in this instance and system the takeaway was that the Phonolab is a straight A student but the 810 in comparison had more swagger on top of good grades :) . The Phonolab does have the interesting Recompizer function which is pretty nice to have with less than stellar recordings, for my wide ranging musical tastes it gets used...

Very happy with my Pass XP-27.  Super quiet and brings out the uniqueness of each cartridge. No balanced input, but has a true balanced output. Great controls up front for MC, MI, MM carts.