talk to me about phono pre-amps

[afphreak]

my venerable pioneer receiver's right channel died on me this morning, taking my only phono pre-amp with it... time to upgrade! but being a vinyl noob, who received his system from his father, i'm not sure where to begin, i made a post last year about furthering my analog journey here but due to many odd circumstances i haven't been able to follow through with anything.

i remember i was looking at getting a new Pro-Ject Debut III or Rega P1 TT around the $400 range back then, and will probably do so soon anyways, so i should take that into account... and possibly upgrade to better Cart down the road..

So are their any synergistic pairings of TTs/Carts and phono pre-amps i should look at? most of my music tastes is split between the usual Classic Rock, and newer metalcore/hardcore. also i'm planning on going balanced on most of my gear this year, so i might as well go balanced with this also, would that mean a balanced cart, balanced TT, Balanced pre-amp?

oi, me wallet is gonna six-feet under by the end of the year

[fran]

2 that get good mention:

Nad PP2 - which I own and it is a decent performer. MM and MC inputs.

Cambridge 640 (I think thats the number) - I've seen good reports on it, but haven't heard it.

I don't know of any balanced phono stages unless you are willing to build one yourself.

Are you up for some DIY?

Fran

Fran

[nikongod]

1: all cartridges are balanced. its the connections and amps that are not.

2: i am also not sure of any "input to output" balanced phono stages. for that matter, unless you are going to spend a similar amount on the amp, im not sure it will really matter if it splits the signal after the phono stage. you can get a balanced signal through an RCA plug, so thats not an indicator either way.

if the rega p1 & project 3 are indicators of budget, thats going to be harder still. the rega will need to be rewired if you are going balanced (cartridge to driver...) because of the funky tonearm ground. there are some single-ended phono stages that dont take kindly to the rega setup either.

if you are up for some DIY, there are a few balanced phono stage designs floating around the web.

3: rega arms seem to LOVE ortofon carts. its certainly has nothing to do with the fact that the rega branded carts are rebadged ortofons.... i had pretty good results with a denon 103 on a rega rb300. im not sure what project tonearms work well with, but eeh. i would look around on audioasylum, and find some information on matching cartridge compliance to tonearm effective mass.

edited:
your wallet is skrood! there is an upper limit to the prices on headphones and headphone amps

[Lazarus Short]

I have a Dual phono preamp which you can have for the shipping. The in/out puts are DIN, but I have extra DIN cables. I acquired a good Denon receiver, so I don't need it - PM me if you do.

Laz

[afphreak]

well, i popped open the pioneer earlier this morning to see if it was possibly a broken solder connection, and found out the problem was a *very* corroded source switch. cleaned it up, and its working again for the moment, but i dont quite trust it. so i'm still gonna look around...

as for my budget, i really dont have one, i've got a lot of planning and research ahead of me, and dont mind saving up for a while and grabbing a high end table and phonostage if it fits my needs. just need time

i dont mind much DIY either, but i'd have to get a better iron to tackle the larger projects(POS radioshack iron right now), i've been procrastinating on that also

[nikongod]

you will be delighted to learn then that some of the DIY balanced phono stages are only a few steps harder than a cmoy. if you are comfy building a cmoy, you should be able to at least build a "VSPS" (single ended, see link below) to keep the gears of war turning, and then use the experience to build a balanced phono stage if you like.

LINK although i have not built any of these amps, i think this is a good site to start at.

as a helpful hint:
i suppose opamps throw a wrench in the works, and make PSU "silence" less important, but the PSU is very important. you need only to look at the change seen in a pimeta when comparing a steps to a simple wall-wart.