How are you doing my friend?
Not too bad. I'm still in an apartment too small for my system, so no real music. May have to get a headphone rig + phono to get by.
I'm still working on this pre-amp deal. Thanks for feeding me tips!
I think you are going to find a big sonic difference between your Carver pre and the SP-16 - for the better.
Do these stepup transformers affect the resulting sound quality typically in your experience, or are the better ones able to just stay out of the way and boost the signal with no ill effects?
Well, this opens up one of the great vinyl debates around here. There is one camp which thinks transformers, especially phono stepups, seriously degrade the quality of low level cartridge signals. And another, equal, camp thinks they are great when done properly.
To me, it's all about cost, ease of use, and personal preference. Whatever works best for you in your system. If you can find one of these MC transformer boxes that has ~24dB gain for a few hundred bucks, give it a try for a few weeks and see if it works. If not, it will easily resell here quickly.
Another approach would be finding something like Graham Slee's EXP "transformerless" stepup. It sells for ~$1k new and $650 used. The EXP is an active solid state circuit that has +22.5dB gain and is dead quiet. I used it with Slee's Era Gold mkV phono premap and the combination was great(tho, the Era Gold didn't have enough gain for my DL-103D).
In your setup, the GS EXP would give you 76.5 dB gain, or about 1.6V-1.7V output from the SP-16. It would all depend on the sensitivity of your MF A3cr amp. MF lists it as 1000mW, but I'm not sure what that means as most manufacturers use volts as a sensitivity.
