Jasmine vs Musical Surroundings Nova Phono Pre-Amp

I think that the Nova Series of phono stages are truly wonderful for their price point, like all Michael Yee designed audio products. The trick is to set them up properly for your cartridge.

Speaking of which, you will probably resent me saying this but IMO you will never wring the best performance out of either your DL-103 or Well Tempered tonearm when used together - this is simply not a good match. The DL-103 family is an extremely low-compliance cartridge that was designed for heavy, rigid, high mass tonearm. Simply weighting the headshell is not enough - that will not significantly change the tonearm resonance.

I speak from experience here, but YMMV. Good luck.

I'm very happy with my Vincent PHO-8 phono preamp. Similar design to the Jasmine, but slightly cheaper.

I have the Jasmine phono stage, with the upgrade of the output capacitors. I don't even give a thought to upgrading. The sound reproduction is refined and open. I use it with a Denon DL-S1.

Hi Redglobe, The units are not easy to open. I opened the
main unit to see if the left channel wiring was loose because I thought that the fault was there. But I noticed that the capacitors are from an unknown producer and think
that they can be easily substituted for some 'exotic'kind. When I got the new unit and discovered that the fault was in my tonearm I had no inclination to mess with the capacitors. However the other may want to try so you should mention the capacitors you used and their value.

I heard the Vincent pho-8 in my system before I bought the Jasmine. Here is my order of preference in the 3 phono preamps I've had:

Jasimine LP2.0 mkII - keeper, very big soundstage, very true to tone with nice tube like qualities and tight bottom end

Pro-ject phono tube box II with upgraded tubes - big soundstage, good tone but noticeably loose on the bottom end

Vincent Pho-8 - smaller soundstage and dry sounding, had a ground loop problem in my system (none of the other preamps above had this problem)