Frontier1,
I'm fully with Rauliruegas on this one!
Excuse this crazy question but have you tried the Lyra straight into the MM input of your Shindo? This might give you a taste of how good a non-SUT setup can be? I do not doubt that there a great SUTs out there but they are few and far between(probably expensive too, + extra interconnect cost)), I personally never came across one.
I have a 0.28mV MC Colibri which I ran for a year into the ARC Ref Phono MC input (built-in Jensen SUT, 69db gain). Not sure what alcohol or drug I was on one night but I tried it into MM (48db gain) and up to this day I can't believe how much better it is. Yes there's a bit more hiss but the sound, OMG! So I'm now looking for a higher output Colibri. For half the cost of a great SUT I suspect you can finance an upgrade/crossgrade to a good non-SUT valve higher gain phono stage, maybe. BTW it also wouldn't suprise me if a cheaper higher output Lyra sounds better straight into MM than your current cart through an SUT...
I'm fully with Rauliruegas on this one!
Excuse this crazy question but have you tried the Lyra straight into the MM input of your Shindo? This might give you a taste of how good a non-SUT setup can be? I do not doubt that there a great SUTs out there but they are few and far between(probably expensive too, + extra interconnect cost)), I personally never came across one.
I have a 0.28mV MC Colibri which I ran for a year into the ARC Ref Phono MC input (built-in Jensen SUT, 69db gain). Not sure what alcohol or drug I was on one night but I tried it into MM (48db gain) and up to this day I can't believe how much better it is. Yes there's a bit more hiss but the sound, OMG! So I'm now looking for a higher output Colibri. For half the cost of a great SUT I suspect you can finance an upgrade/crossgrade to a good non-SUT valve higher gain phono stage, maybe. BTW it also wouldn't suprise me if a cheaper higher output Lyra sounds better straight into MM than your current cart through an SUT...