Ideal TT & Arm for the following top cartridges...

Vetterone - Thanks for chiming in. No doubt about the quality of the Brinkman and if their tt comes up for sale with a quality arm in the $5-10k range I will certainly give it serious consideration. As mentioned in a previous post, we uninanmously preferred the Graham Phantom/Shelter 90x vs. Brinkman's arm/cartridge and both were mounted on a LaGrange. We will soon revisit this and keep the cartridge the same to get a better sense of the the Phanton vs. Brinkman sound.

Nice to know you have good experience using the TP arm with the Dynavector and the Zyx. I have not heard the XV-1s and look forward to the opportunity when it presents itself. Thanks to a fellow local audio club member, I have heard the UNIverse in my system and it is a remarkable cartridge. It was impressive relative to the Colibri and KRSP. It did not have the speed and resolution and dynamics of the Colibri and leaned more toward the sonic signature of the KRSP, but with a little more refined transparency and focussed dimensionality; smooth and musical overall. It was so impressive that I seriously considered it relative to the MC2 Finish at nearly the same pricepoint. However, because IMHO I felt my KRSP's performance was close enough to that of the UNIverse, I decided on trying the Allearts.

Raul,I think you may have missed my point.Nobody,at this hobby, for any real length of time,will dispute the significance of the phonostage.That being said,the beginning of this particular thread clearly asks about arm/table/cartridge matching.That seems to be where this particular poster wants to spend his money.
My contention is (and I completely agree with you about the phonostage)that anyone in the "emotional" buying stage,for the arm/table/cart is concerned with those choices,and usually(most often)does not want to start analyzing a different "playback" concern,like another "box",in the fashion of the phonostage.
It is here where a close association with a good dealer would normally come into play,yet today the vast majority of purchases are made on the "net"(nothing wrong there,btw),so that "personal involvement in the system",by the dealer, is diminished.
This is why I stated that the commonality so much of us share,is the "buy and sell"(until we actually learn something)syndrome.
WELL,those fortunate enough to read,and maybe ponder some of the stuff discussed in forums like this one,can possibly save some time,and money,by thinking about the kinds of stuff "The Great Irigues" speaks to!!

How's that one!

Best!!

sirspeedy70680@ & Rauliruegas - Yes I agree that the audiophile merry-go-round process of buying and trying equipment, can be tedious and costly. The assistance and expertise of seasoned hobbyists like yourselves can help relatively newcomers like me to be more efficient as we search. In the end when the latest and greated piece of equipment is introduced into our system, it is our own evaluation of its performance that dictates whether it stays or goes.

I also agree with the importance you place on the phonostage. I hesitated when deciding on the title of this thread, trying to decide whether or not to include it. I am aware that the performance potential of my cartridges surpass those of my arms, tt or phonostage. I purposefully left out the phonostage in the title so that I can focus on the tt and arm with the intent on searching the archives for highly recommended phonostages. Admittedly my current analog setup, despite being made up of quality gear is, in the grand scheme of things, midfi and no where near reference level. As you can see from one of my previous posts my search for a phonostage has already been fairly extensive. I am lucky that I did not have to pay for the chance to listen to many of these units as they were brought over by local audio club members. The ones that came with a price tag were acquired with the option to return the unit if it did not work out in my system.

Rauliruegas - It can also be concluded from my previous post, that I prefer the sound of a tube phonostage. I have heard one old and one new generation Rowland in my system and along with my Threshold FET10HL, Groove and more recently, my Whest and ASR Basis Exclusive experiences, none of them did for me what the top performing tube-based gear has done. I will look forward to an in-my-system chance of evaluating an Ayre, FM Acoustics, Connoisseur, Boulder, etc. and see if they can reach out and grab me. Unfortunately, the latter three are simply too costly.

So as tempting as it is to want to qualify my statement about output coupling capacitors relative to your stance on the merits of DC coupled designs, I will bow out for many reasons, the most important among them are: 1) I am not an engineer so am in no position to prefer one design over another based on technical/theoretical knowledge, 2) it has the potential to lead to a ss vs. tube discussions, which is a non-issue for me as I am open to trying all types of phonostages, and 3) the design (whether right or wrong) of an audio gear is of less importance to me than how it ultimately performs/sounds in my system.

What does this all mean? I have to face the possibility that if I cannot find a tube unit to work with the MC2, then I may have to settle on the need to have two phonostages. I also realize that this can occur before or after deciding on a tonearm to ideally mate with my cartridges on a quality tt. So it is possible that I will have to settle for a solid state unit (DC coupled or otherwise) for the MC2 and whatever tube phonostage I end up liking for the other MC cartridges with higher outputs.

I look forward to receiving your TP comments offline. Feel free to recommend either here or offline your top choices of DC coupled phonostages in the $4-7k range. Also curious if you and your colleague(s) manufacture your custom full function preamp? If so what is the cost to have one made? If you do manufacture it, do you have adequate inventory of these units available for someone like me to try?

Dear Norm: +++++ " Groove and more recently, my Whest and ASR Basis Exclusive experiences, none of them did for me what the top performing tube-based gear has done.... " +++++

If you heard those SS phonopreamps in your system and the only thing that you do was to disconnect your tube unit and connect the SS one then I understand your statement.

It is almost imposible that with a totally different technology you could hear the differences for the good/bad with out " touching " any single link on your audio chain, it is the same if you pass from SS to tubes : what we have to do is to set up again our whole system: VTA, load impedance, cables, speaker position, etc, etc.. If the new unit is really a very good one then this new unit could tell you some problems that you have in your system and that appear with this new unit in the system chain. As a fact those problems always were there but the " old " unit hiding through its lesser quality and higher distortions/noise/colorations. You don't have to be and engineer to have a point on this statement, everyone can do it.
If with the new unit you don't like what you are hearing you don't have to conclude that this new unit is the problem, why? you have to do a research for to know where is the problem because maybe the problem is in other place in the system and till now you never knew you already have it.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Rauliruegas - Let's please take the phonostage topic offline shall we? You are also welcome to open a new thread.

All - Thanks for contributing to this thread. Lots of great info! It would be great to hear specifically from owners of the Koetsu RS Platinum, Van Den Hul Colibri XGW, Miyabi/47 Labs and Allaerts MC2 Finish to see what tonearm they've found to be most synergistic. TIA & regards.