which is better ? MC phono stage or MM+step-up ?

Sorry to go one about this but it is too incredible.

I just rewired my SUT with the same mil-spec. silver solid wire. My system just took a huge leap upwards! The sound stage is much more articulated with less hash and congestion. The bass is much more authoritative and controlled. The trebles are sweet and without glare of any kind. Just sweet.
The sound floor has dropped out of site. The hum problem is gone completely.This wire is amazing. I should find a giant spool of it and go into business.

cheers

e

Emorrisiv, one thing you will find in working with cartridges in general is it is best to keep your connections between the cartridge and the preamp to a minimum.

In the case of an SUT, I think you will also find the cable **after** the SUT to more critical than the one before, as the impedances involved are much higher at the output of the SUT and so more susceptible to cable issues. By comparison, the cable from the cartridge (if the cartridge is properly loaded) is relatively non-critical, especially if you run it balanced, which is possible if you have an SUT.

Atmasphere,

Quick question for a non-technical guy: my SUT is an EAR MC-4 with four RCA inputs and one RCA output. How would I run it balanced?

Thank you.

Brent

MM phono stages introduce capacitance which is completely useless for MC carts. I am not technical enough to assess if capacitance would affect the sound adversely, so I would suggest looking into this and finding more professional advise on a subject.
Highly adjustable (mouse piano) phono stages,imho sound worse than non-adjustable phonos.

Brent, All transformers have a primary and secondary winding (if they only have a primary then they are called autoformers). The windings do not care if one side is at ground or not. So at the input to the SUT, you could lift the winding connection that is at ground, and use an XLR connector, set up with pin 1 (ground) being the arm ground and transformer shield, pin 2 being the + output of the cartridge and the 'normal' input wire to the SUT, and pin 3 being the minus output of the cartridge and the wire that was lifted from ground.

This effects a balanced input, and the output can then be single-ended or balanced, again using the same technique.