El-cheapo phono stages which don't ****

Dynavector 10x5 - Not only doesn't it suck, it is a great cartridge, maybe even at double the price.

MBM

Cool, but thats a cartridge surely?

Cart not the issue

Hi redeye

Creek OBH 8/9SE phono stage. Great sound only £165 .

Colin

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Originally posted by redeye:
Cool, but thats a cartridge surely?

Cart not the issue

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Whoops! That's what I get for skimming the forum while on the phone. How about the Stageline? Prior to my conversion to Naim, my preamp had a phono stage so I have not done much sampling of separate phono stages. However, my table sounds awfully good coming out of the Stageline, and in comparison with others it surely has to qualify as "el cheapo" (until you start adding the *caps!).

MBM

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Originally posted by NAIMGAIM:
Creek? EEEEWWWWW nasty!!! For another couple bills you can buy a Dynavector P-75 which spanks most phono pre amps at ANY p
rice!

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Hi
Yes the P75 is good but is not a cheap stage.

Colin

Been warned off the Stageline by local hifi emporium. Arm and cart not good enough apparently (probably correct)

Besides the added bonus of needing to acquire a power supply to run the damn thing puts me off. Trying to keep things simple y'see.

Does anyone know if the DV has adjustable gain? Curious in case I did get an MC later

How good is an EAR 834P MM/MC Phono preamp?

I'll be running a turntable into a preamp into a tube headphone amp. I was thinking all analog.


Mitch

You could look at parasound pph100. It is definately better than my internal card was. Cheap too. say about 150 US new.

Ken

Redeye,

AFAIK all the Naim options are the original phono boards in a different guise. In the stageline you get them in a separate housing, in the prefix you get them to attach straight to the tonearm wiring. So I think your dealer is wrong when he says your arm and cartridge are not good enough. If they're good enough for internal boards, they're good enough for the external solution, should you want to go that way. Whether you'd be better off spending the dough in another way is another story-but not really relevant since you want to go external for other reasons.

I have a prefix on my LP12, but can't say that I found an improvement in CD replay when the phono beards were removed from my then NAC 82.

Cheers, Jens

It's cheap and easily available in NZ. http://www.audioenz.co.nz/2004/nad_pp2.shtml
I have no idea, but thought you may be interested

quote:

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Originally posted by redeye:
Been warned off the Stageline by local hifi emporium. Arm and cart not good enough apparently (probably correct)

Besides the added _bonus_ of needing to acquire a power supply to run the damn thing puts me off. Trying to keep things simple y'see.

Does anyone know if the DV has adjustable gain? Curious in case I did get an MC later

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Th DV has three gain settings (2 for MC, 1 for MM), plus some load adjustemnts and sits at about US$600. I've run a Stageline with a vintage AT1007 arm and a Grado, and didn't feel I was listening to a horror. In my case it's running of the HiCapped Nait. Before the Stageline I had Musical Fidelity XLPS2, which whilst not being as rhythmically tight as the Stageline was not, at all, unpleasant to listen to. Those should go for c £100 used. And, definitely, not as bad as some may say.

Peter

User34 at Laposte dot net

redeye, probably the most cost-effective solution would be to take your existing phono cards and mount them in an external case with a reasonable power supply. Ask for help over on Pink Fish. Effectively a Stageline with integral power supply.

A P75 is too expensive and may be too revealing.

The Creek things are not nearly as bad as NAIMGAIM makes them out to be and can be found s/h for little money. Probably worse than the diy route though.

I got a Rega Phono to go with my Planer 3. Doesn't quite match the Nait5/CD5 for dynamics but gives a good, warm detailed sound, great for jazz. As I only play 1/10th as much vinyl as CD this seemed an acceptable budget stage. Of course, if I had the money.....

This has been getting good word of mouth on a German forum recently (to read the English version, scroll to the bottom of the page). Might be worth a punt.

Now Mr. Naim, here's your chance to come up with that self powered Stageline. I'd buy one.

Have fun!

willem

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Originally posted by Ross Blackman:
Redeye, I'm not sure if you get much Australian equipment in NZ but both Redgum and ME make quite good phono stages which are relatively cheap (about A$400-500 I think). I owned the Redgum phono for a while and thought it was actually very good.

A bit more expensive is the Lehmann Black Cube, which can often be picked up cheaply on ebay or Audiogon (you will obviously need a transformer for a US version).

Rotel make a quite cheap phono stage RA970(?) - I owned one for a while and thought it was just barely adequate at the price of (I think) about A$200.

Avoid at all costs those horrible Musical Fidelity things which are quite cheap but just junk.

Ross

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hy Ross!knowing black cube as a hyped product i have tried it with my Goldring
elite 1 100ohm cartridge.Tonally it was ok
but playing louder it lost the rythm,imo the project phono box(no tonal champion) gives more rythm and therefore more fun to me.
o.j.

NAD do a phono stage box switchable between MM & MC. It costs 999DKK (Denmark) so that's roughly £100GBP but it's probably a bit cheaper in the UK. It's called the NAD PP2. That's all I now about it.

Nime

Everyone has the right to be wrong.