Step Up Transformers….Are they Worth the Trouble?

love your direction. i have a warm place in my heart for my much loved Dobbins Garrard 301 from 2008-2011, i have owned -4- Etsuro cartridges and still have one which is my favorite all time moving coil cartridge. my main phono is the silver wound EMIA phono corrector hot rodded with 2 power supplies, and i’m enjoying my EMIA silver wound MC Trio.

so i agree with your perspective on what a properly matched SUT can bring to the table......ultra sexy musicality and bass agility. i love the humanity and immersion i get from my Dave Slagle designed SUT. he helped me to properly match it to my cartridges. one of the SUT’s in my MC Trio is a 1:15 silver which seems to be a perfect match for the Etsuro. cannot say whether the Etsuro OEM SUT is as good. my only comment would be that if you ever try to sell the Etsuro SUT that might be harder than a Dave Slagle SUT.

i did compare the copper and silver SUT’s from Slagle and preferred the silver. but not all silver is created equal and what Dave uses is quite special and not at all tipped up. maybe ask Dave about that for more info.

i also have 2 separate solid state phono pre’s inside my battery powered dart preamp. they are very fine and i do use them and appreciate their low noise and dynamics, but overall prefer the EMIA tubes + SUT approach musically. a bit greater emotive content.

hope that helps. congrats on your direction.

For the very lowest output MC (Ortofon MC2000), Dave Slagle built me a head amp which I couple with my very much tweaked tube-rectified and tube voltage- regulated Silvaweld phono stage. This combo is the best sounding of 3 possible ways in which I can achieve the gain necessary for the MC2000 output of .05mV. The others being a high gain SS phono stage or a high gain hybrid SS/tube phono stage. So the common denominator is that Dave Slagle knows what he is doing.

btw; my friend has both Fuuga and Etsuro Urushi Bordeaux cartridges, and uses Slagle SUT’s and EMIA 'custom' phono. PM me and i can connect you for that exact compare.

@br3098 

Would you provide some brands that impressed you. Thank you. 

@lewm…appreciate your vote on Dave Slagle. 

@mikelavigne 

Appreciate your candid feedback. I will take you up on your offer to connect with your friend and reach out to Dave Slagle for a customized SUT solution. 

@lalitk I have owned a lot of SUTs over the years, including Ortofon ST-80 (great w/ SUT cartridges), Bob's Devices w/ Cinemag transformers (highly recommended, and Bob is a great guy), A123, various SUTs using Hashimoto HM-5 & HM-7 transformers (very distinctive sound) and Audio Note. There have been others as well.

Having listed all of these you need to decide which cartridge(s) you want to use and then pick an SUT to match. Or vice versa. Some SUTs have switchable gain but they will still sound better with particular cartridges. This is the beauty of head amps - you with most of them you can change settings to precisely match your cartridge.