SUT With a Manley Steelhead RC?

I think it’s well known Koetsu never wound their own SUT’s, but sourced them from a Japanese maker - the question is "who"? Haven’t seen an answer on that, yet. The new metal-box SUT shows some additional components inside there too (resistors) along with damping materials - so they’re probably doing something to "optimize" sonics for Koetsu. The old wood box SUT’s are different - and they lean towards the "detailed / fast" side of the sonic spectrum, with a little extra energy in treble and without destroying the midrange romance (like Lundahls do). It is a VERY good match for Koetsu carts. Can sound great with other carts too, but you have to watch that treble getting too hot. I don’t know how the metal boxes ones sound. 

For Ortofon - their Verto shows Lundhals inside. Pretty much any transformer with that distinct flat rectangular metal box is going to be a Lundahl. Lots of component manufacturers use them (line inputs too). I’d be surprised if Ortofon wound any of their modern SUT’s. I’d be surprised if ANY cartridge manufacturer did.

EAR is impressive for winding their own transformers (and their MC-3 / MC-4 SUT’s are superb), but they’re a component maker, not a cartridge maker.

I’ve a Steelhead RC that has been the one constant in my system for several years. I ran it as a preamp for a little while but prefer it into an active preamp. I use the Veloce Litho battery pre that has been mentioned in this thread and also have the Saetta battery monoblocks.

A while back I was using a lomc, an Audio Tekne MC 6310 rated 0.1mv. I had the matching Audio Tekne SUT. The Steelhead has tons of gain even on the MM. I could run the 0.1mv Audio Tekne through the MM input and felt it sounded better than using it with the matching SUT. However I configured the ground arrangement there was always just a tiny amount of low level hum with the sut in circuit. It’s possible that it would have been inaudible but for the battery powered Veloce but I didn’t have another linestage on hand to try it.

Anyway, I think with a unit like the Steelhead there wasn’t anything to be gained using the SUT (‘scuse the pun).

By the way, I stupidly sold the Audio Tekne to “move up” to a Benz LP-S. What a mistake that was. The Audio Tekne is still the best cart I’ve owned in my system.

Rooze

ps - love the two YouTube vids someone posted above, one is of my old system before changing out the speakers.

In all cases, at all settings, my Steelhead is very quiet.  So (Snackey), I am wondering whence comes the noise you say was bothersome when you set gain at 65db via the MM inputs. Try reducing the gain setting in 5-db increments until you get to a point where noise is not a problem but gain is still sufficient. Was the volume control over past the 12 o'clock position?  If so, that might suggest you won't have luck reducing the gain setting, as I just suggested. I cannot recall ever having the volume control past 1 o'clock, even with very low output cartridges, but that speaks to the input sensitivity of my amplifiers.  Also, try listening to a variety of LPs, to be sure that the noise you heard did not emanate from a dirty or particularly noisy LP. Before this turns into a SUT symposium. If you do hear noise, listen to determine whether it is in both channels or just one.  If in one channel, that might indicate a faulty tube,

The biggest improvement I made in my Steelhead (and it was huge) was swapping out the original tubes to Siemens CCA grey plates and Bendix 6900s. Granted, the Bendixes are hard to find these days (also sold as Mu, I believe), but those changes eliminated any tiny bit of grain I might have perceived in the stock Steelhead. And the gain of the Steelhead is phenomenal. 

Per the specs of the Manley Steelhead, the maximum rated input voltage is 50 mV. Your MSL cartridge with a 0.5 mV output is stepped up to 10 mV with the 1:20 MSL SUT. Maximum cartridge output voltage can be as high as ten-times the cartridge’s rated output when playing LPs. Therefore, your MM phono stage should have an overload capability of at least 100-mV for the 0.5-mV cartridge. I looked at the specs for an Audio Research Ref 2SE, the maximum rated input voltage is 250 mV and I used higher turns ratio (1:26) SUT’s with 0.4 mV output cartridges and never had any issues. I think most phonostages have a higher max input voltage capability than 50 mV. Also, I didn’t see a single Steelhead user in this thread indicate that they use(d) an SUT. I would poll the Steelhead users to see if they use SUT’s, and if so, the turns ratio and output voltage of the cartridge. This also seems like an appropriate question for Manley. In the meantime if you can get hold of a lower rated MC < 0.24 mV, and see if the issue persists.

I’m by no means an expert on this subject, but all this is based on what I’ve read from a Steelhead owner that was using a Cotter Mk2L (1:70 ratio) with a 0.28 mV output cartridge and was having similar issues as well as my own experience with SUT’s.