VAC Owners:Outboard Phono Stage?

Podeschi,
Nice to have you in the "smitten-by-the-1131" club.

It's always interesting to share our impressions boldly and openly on these threads... but when your A'gon friends start spending money based on our impressions, one can certainly get a little concerned. What if they don't have the same experience? What if they hate it and resent me for being a tin-eared miscreant?

All I can say is, Alright! Glad you were impressed enough to want two of them. Loved the blender metaphor! Hey, now that there are two of us in this club, we can tell anyone that doesn't agree with us that they are obviously half-deaf cretins who don't have the sophistication to hear the magic this SUT brings! This, of course, will get them to buy it out of sheer embarrassment... Then we can hit Bob up for a commission, and also.... OK, wait, I shouldn't be posting this...

Anyone else ready to join the club?

Right on, Alonski. I would also add to our Cinemag Infomercial I had a funky ground loop hum issue with my Miyajima setup (something about my system). The 1131 fixed that.

An Infomercial... Now why didn't I think of that? You see, Podeschi, that's why you were elected the club's Strategic Marketing Director (in a landslide victory I should add).

I also had a ground loop issue that I never fully solved, even after I installed two 20AMP dedicated circuits!

After much posting and consultation with my electrician and the technicians at PurePower in Canada, I just kinda gave up since I was able to tame it down to a dull, background whine that didn't regularly bring me to the point of psychosis anymore.

But in the first minutes of having the CINEMAG in the chain, I tried the Ground Lift toggle, turned up the volume way past what would be ear-melting level if I had something playing and – whaddaya know, quiet.

The 1131 fixed it with a simple slip of a fwitch!

I am looking forward to meeting our humble hero Bob at THE SHOW in southern California in a few weeks. Anyone else on this thread going?

Alón

I have been following this thread with interest- since a Steelhead was mentioned earlier, and I just switched from that to the Allnic h3000. It is far too early in the process to make any concrete judgments, but the Allnic seems to sound far less compressed than the Steelhead. It does need to break-in though, which is one of the reasons for my hestitation in providing a glowing review. The other variable in my system, my line stage, is temporarily in a holding pattern- a Lamm Reference line stage, which is making all sorts of nasty noise, and obviously needs to be fixed. I substituted a Joule LA 150mkII, which, frankly, is far too lush in combination with the ML2 amps (the Joule might be the ticket for someone with big solid state amps of the analytic variety).
The other interesting thing is that the Steelhead really only sounded great through the MM inputs, rather than the step up transformers- through the transformers, it exhibited some unevenness across the spectrum. The Allnic doesn't seem to behave that way at all.
Oh, and the Allnic is pretty gorgeous, if you are a gearhead. :)

Alonski, I bought the E.A.R. MC4 SUT I've been demo'ing today. I am sitting here spinning a few LPs and just smiling. Glad we both arrived at the same conclusion...If you're ever in Texas, let me know and stop by !