Zanth, I ran across your thread about upgading the Ear (I have considered the same quandary and was doing research). The Ear 834P is lovely, for what it is, but the low-output Grados, fine cartridges that they are, are not moving coil designs. It was difficult to get a clear answer about this from Ear and particularly Grado, but Jim Hagerman, (despite a slight preference for transformers, when they are appropriate) understood the issues perfectly and made no bones about it: the low output Grado Statement (and Statement Reference) are incompatible with ALL moving coil stepups. The Grado design requires an active step-up stage. In a way, Raul was correct about this (but not so much, in social grace.) Hagerman Labs Piccolo (an active FET based design) into the Ear 934P MM input was a tremendous improvement over the internal Ear transformers (as well as Peerless 15095s, which I tried). Since the alternatives were as to ditch the Grado or the EAR 834P at a loss, the Piccolo was well worth the relatively modest cost (much quieter than transformers, too). I would guess that almost any active mc step ups would be better with the low-output Grados than even the best transformers. IMO Grado should be more forthcoming about this in their marketing materials. Jim Hagerman, Ears distributor and Grados elderly factory expert were all nice, responsive and did their best to help me get to the bottom of this issue, but of the three, only Jim Hagerman really understood it and could give a clear answer and he was right.
