Uesugi UTY-7 phono stage

Thanks for the info T_bone,
The price of this is indeed around 40% of original retail so I'm also tempted to get it on spec. I have just made the reservation on audiounion (japanese used store similiar to hifido)so i'll have a look at it over the weekend. I've only just recently discovered uesugi products and find them quite interesting. You are right in that they seem to be very popular in japan.
I'm hoping it will be a marked improvement over my current stand alone phono stage - Trigon vanguard II, which is relatively budget compared to the Uesugi.
Uesugi do not seem to have their own website which seems to be same for several other japanese companies, highphonic for example.
Anyway, thanks again

Hmmm... I looked on Audiounion after i wrote that (because they occasionally have Uesugi stuff, and they are one of the only places to have Linear Technology stuff) and I did not notice it. I guess that means you live in Tokyo too though... Pity that it is tough to test much in their stores... That said, I would imagine that for 140k yen you could do a lot worse (but I know nothing of the Trigon), and if you decide you don't like it, it will not lose you much (if anything) if you decide to sell it on YahooAuc.

Have never seen a website for Hiphonic. For some reason, I thought that Uesugi was being distributed by someone like Esoteric, but I could be wrong. You might try their website (not TEAC/Esoteric but the Japanese website).

I presume audiounion took off the listing once they recieved my reservation for the uesugi. You're right about the distribution of Uesugi. I noticed that Esoteric have a link to the UT-50 integrated amp. However, I wonder if this is a joint venture between the two companies as the website does not include other models of uesugi.

Btw, you guessed right - moved from UK to Tokyo couple of years back and have since discovered a new found past-time of buying up old vinyl LPs in recofan and diskunion. Any other recommendations would be gratefully appreciated.

I think recofan is a terrible place and you should never ever go back there (because you might buy the stuff I want to buy). Recofan is just down the street from me and that makes it downright dangerous, and I go there as often as I go to all the other places I visit combined I guess at this point, so no other recommendations really (if I were into records at 10k yen a pop, I might have some, but I am not. In any case, recently I have been avoiding the place just to listen to what I have, but I am sure I will be back there over the holidays...

You might be right about a possible Esoteric/Uesugi JV on that one amp, but for some reason I seem to remember seeing more of their stuff on the Esoteric/Teac site before... tho could be wrong.

hehe,..I know your feeling. I prefer recofan and luckily there are a few scattered around near me too. The largest one I came across was the one near tokyo hands in shibuya though. It can be rather addictive, however I'm also not into shelling out 10k for a record.