The problem is your preamp. ARC preamps are great but their gain structure is crazy high. The trouble you will have with any cart, phono combo is you will need to drop the gain out of the phono pre too much to get it to work well with the ARC and thus not get the most out of your cartridge. I’ve had three ARC pre’s and all were similar. Try another pre, or maybe try an ARC phono pre then go from there. A great bang for the buck cart is the HANA SL a good starter and the ML is hard to beat at the price point.
Advice on next step for vinyl chain
Hi everyone. I have been listening to digital and working on my digital setup for a few years now. Recently I inherited an old Kenwood turntable and I have a pretty large record collection from earlier years. I have been trying to set up a vinyl chain. It has been a real joy - even liked the pops and scratches at first. Can I ask some advice about cartridge choice, or even whether a new cartridge is the way to go? The current chain is: Kenwood KD-5070, Ortofon Blue MM cartridge, Parasound JC3+ phono pre, ARC LS25 II preamp, McIntosh MC 462 power amp, either B and W 803 matrix II or Celestion 700 speakers. The B annd W are a bit sharp and fatiguing, so I will be looking to switch to other speakers before long, something with the upper end of the Celestions but with bass (Harbeth?). I listen to big classical, chamber, classic rock, jazz, opera…
The gain on the vinyl chain is high. Have to keep the pre almost all the way down. The ARC is marginally better than using a passive pre. Thinking a moving coil would be a real improvement. Is that the way to go? Which cartridge would be a match? Thanks a lot for your help.
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- 19 posts total
- 19 posts total