Vinyl sounds a bit thin and slightly strident.

I just did a major tweaking of my TNT Jr. as my cd was bettering my vinyl. Got the Cardas golden reference, new cleaning fluids & brushes, reset the phonostage loading, capacitance & gain, got a digital tracking scale to zero in VTF; spent hours on VTA but found the biggest thing was perfectly leveling the player. The VPI arms really need a perfect level. My TNT Jr. now blows away my Esoteric X03 SE.

I own a Sony 9000es SACD and I've heard many VPI Scout combinations.

The problem lies elsewhere than the Scout, which is capable of much more musical output than the Sony 9000es. 1) Examine your cartridge and tonearm setup. 2) The Benz leans toward the warm side of the scale. You may want to try a denon 103, but I don't think the cartridge is the source of your complaint for the most part. 3) Eliminate those Cardas cables, all of which are veiled. Many folks use those cables to tame strident gear. The golden reference is good, but so is the Speltz anti-cable for a lot less dough. Sell the cardas, buy Speltz, Zu or make your own cables (see Parts Connexion) and buy vinyl with the difference. 4) IMHO the Audio Research gear leans toward the strident side. I've not heard the Levinson, but I prefer tubes, so that tells you my bias.

In any event, the VPI should sound significantly better than the Sony. Good luck, Jeff

The VPI stuff can be pretty bright, you might try a British table such as Rega or Nottingham. Nottinghams in particular are quite dark.

Thanks for all the responses everyone, this is why I love the 'gon. I'm loading the cartridge @ 2.5K each leg of the XLR and I popped out the 220pF caps so it's only the cable capacitance in the circuit, It's been a while so I can't fully remember the justification for this move. So, I got aggressive with raising the VTA today and a lot of good things happened so I'm very hopeful. It dawned on me demagnetizing the cartridge may help because it's an MC but I want to get something passive such as a test record to do that. I have a handful of titles on 180g but I haven't bought a lot of them. I have to keep in mind I play quite a bit of used 120g vinyl mass market stuff because I'm fortunate to have a record convention come to town every 3 months and I can pick up LP's/12" singles of stuff I wouldn't think of paying full price for. Either they're titles unavailable on CD or albums containing only a track or 2 I care for. I may just have to give a different set of cables a try too. Thanks again guys!

One thing to do right away is get rid of those ARC supplied EH tubes. These are almost as horrible as the Sovtek. You will not believe how significant Telefunken, Mullard, Amperex, etc., 6922/6DJ8 tubes would make on the LS7. The midrange textures, decays and smoothness in the mids will be quite a surprise.

I owned the PH2 for many years and loved it. It may be solid state, but this is an outstanding phono stage. And it is balanced which seems kinda strange that you are driving it into the LS7 which only has single-ended inputs. Are you using adaptors to/from the PH2? If so, I highly suggest that you look to change to the PH1 which is essentially a single-ended version of the PH2. Stay away from the PH3 - it might sound "right" at first hearing but a return to the PH2 shows how natural this product is.

The Cardas Nuetral cables are great from a tonal neutrality perspective but they remove so much of the spatial aspects in the music that comes through with other cables. As colored as the Cardas Golden Cross ICs can be, one of these between the LS7 and the amp could also be a major sonic effect that you are after.

John