Help. Wife says Teres 340 Is too bright.

Sanhar, A koetsu would make a nice present for her wouldn't it?
I'll try to address some of the suggestions. First, it is all the albums that have a tendency towards brightness in my wife's opinion. Listening fatigue sets in for her after a few albums. Yes, she hears all the good parts and knows it is a big step above the SM but has asked me to tweak the highs so as to tone them down some. I also agree that women generally are more sensitive to highs and it will be advantageous for me to get this taken care of. Thus my post here.
I've also heard that the OL arm has a very good ic. I was quite surprised when she said the highs were bothering her since I thought the highs were tamed in comparison to the SM
I will try the curtain over the plasma also. I used to do that when I had a big box TV and it made a difference. I have some copper ics that I will give a try also. I don't have a good handle on capacitance and its effects but if I need new ic's I'll be back with questions. I'll also take a look at the Black Mambas
As to getting a new wife, nah, She's a keeper who's been with me for 34 yrs and has been very understanding and supportive of my music addiction.
Finally, the Teres/OL/Benz is a very big improvement over the Scoutmaster. That's not to say the SM is bad. Quite the contrary, It is a very good table too and a good bang for the buck. But the Teres is just that good to better it by a wide margin. And after this minor glitch is taken care of It will be even better.
Thanks to all for your suggestions

Late to the party. Is there any wine left?

I don’t believe your wife is hearing excessive upper mids/highs. I believe she’s hearing distorted and smeared upper mids/highs. This important distinction points to different solutions. If I’m correct, rolling off the highs won’t help – you need to clean them up, not reduce them.

When you upgrade a major source component (or two) to a more resolving one, the reduced noise and sound floors pass additional information. This additional complexity can test other components in ways they hadn’t been tested before. I disagree with suggestions that “you only changed the TT/arm, so the problem must be with them”. That sounds appealingly straightforward, but it’s far from true IME. Rather, I think the increase in signal complexity has exposed shortcomings in other components.

You've listed a c-j MF-2500A as your amp. Are you still using that? If so, the new rig may have exposed its limits. I know this amp well because we used one for several years. It’s a good mainstream product from a mainstream company, but it can’t really cope with the full complexity from a top quality vinyl rig.

Fortunately, your Silverline speakers are easy to drive. You have no need for a high wattage SS amp. What you need is an amp that can maintain clarity when fed a complex mixture of closely related waveforms (e.g., vocal and instrumental harmonics).

When we compared our MF-2500A to our present amp (Doshi-modded Lectron JH-50) the difference was breathtaking. I could go on about the areas in which the Doshi is better (name anything, it’s better), but for this thread it’s just worth noting that it reproduces HF’s and harmonics with jaw-dropping clarity and cleanliness. It approaches the purity of the best SET amps, but with enough push-pull power to drive all but very difficult speakers.

Consider trying out a top quality tube amp. Take advantage of your speakers’ being easy to drive. I think your wife’s ears would enjoy that experiment.

Doug makes a very good point which I know but somehow did not come to the top of my brain when I posted. High quality, high resolution transducers (basically what your vinyl rig is, although technically its only the cartridge) will spotlight deficiencies elsewhere in the chain. In this case, downstream.

Yes, Doug. the 2500A is still in service. i guess i'm surprised that the 2500 would b the weak link since it has sounded so good in the past. I've been wanting to get into tubes for a few yrs now. AAMOF, I was looking for a tube preamp when I stumbled across the Teres and just couldn't turn it down. I've thought about SET but wonder if my room is too big? I don't know, though i do know that Silverline shows off their speakers with a 7-8 watt SET.

FWIW, my wife said she didn't want to hear me say that I needed another piece of equipment now because of the TT. So i'm just going to show her your post Doug, and let YOU get into trouble with her. But i do thank you for taking me off the hook on this one.
Again, thanks to all

Even later to the party ... heed Doug's observations and revisit your entire signal chain.

I strongly suspect that you are shooting the messenger (Teres / O-L / Benz). With your new vinyl rig, you have a lower noise floor which yields increased dynamics (bot micro and macro). You're going to hear a lot more - both good and bad, and this demands that you sort things out.

Amongst other things to try, I would not hesitate to swap out phono stages (you're running a Wright WPP 100C?). The Wright is a wonderful unit at its asking price, and I'd never argue against someone getting one, but your front end is now getting to the point where it deserves better (and is likely telling you this).

If Raul joins this thread, he'll correctly expound on the possibility that the energy being put out by your front end is resulting in input overload on your phono stage. This can sound like tracing distortion, but can also mask itself as other distortions. The phono stage is something you'll want to eliminate as a possibility.

I have no experience with your C-J amplifiers, but I'd heed Doug's advice on this as well.

Did I mention to get an arc protractor?

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier