Any experience adding a LPS to a stock Sutherland Duo phono stage?


I have bought a Sutherland Duo phono stage and I would like to add a LPS to it. Is it something I can do by myself? I live in France and not handy to ship the phono stage back to Sutherland for the upgrade. 

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You might provide more information for those of us who are not Sutherland aficionados. Is the OEM PS outboard or built into the main chassis? That’s the first question, because if it’s outboard, then it should be a simple matter to replace the PS chassis with a new LPS. But to do that, you need to know the voltage and current requirements of the audio circuit. Then you could acquire an outboard PS that fulfills those needs of the audio circuit. In addition, you want a connector on the new LPS that is compatible with the connector on the audio chassis. And finally, are you suggesting that the present OEM PS is not a linear type supply?

I just looked up your unit on the Sutherland website.  Don't mess around with what you have.  You already have a linear power supply.  The power supply is built in to the audio chassis, and it would be difficult to improve upon without sending it back to Sutherland.  Moreover, I do not see where Sutherland are even offering a PS upgrade for it.  What their website says is that the DUO already contains a PS that is an upgrade over some previous already expensive model, the 20/20.

To quote: "The 20/20 has delivered an extremely high level of performance at a reasonable price. It is an incredible performance value. What if all the price constraints in the 20/20 were lifted? The price goes up, the performance goes up. It starts looking a lot like the PhonoBlock. The actual signal path of the 20/20 is quite good. It uses a circuit very similar to the PhonoBlock. In critical positions, it also uses the same premium quality (and high cost) components. Very little was held back in that area.

The opportunity for upgrade is focused on a more refined power supply, improved circuit board properties and dual chassis construction. Enter the DUO...

Each DUO has a built in AC power supply. There is an IEC power inlet on each chassis to accommodate the user's personal power cord choice. The shielded power supply module has one output. That output is split into two branches. One for each of the two gain stages. Each of those branches is independently filtered and regulated to provide a substantial foundation for the gain stages."

@lewm i don’t know about the OEM. I will receive the unit next Tuesday. What I have understood on the Sutherland website is that the Duo can be ordered stock version or with LPS being the latter a special version. My Duo has 2 power cord connectors. I have never seen a LPS with two AC power cords. 

Requires two power cords because it is dual mono. "Dual mono" means that each channel is completely discrete from the other, including the PSs, all the way back to the wall socket. So, you naturally need two power cords. This is a design feature, not a compromise. The information about the OEM power supplies is contained in the paragraph I just quoted and in other information available on the Sutherland website. From your last post, I get the impression that you have not yet even received the unit. If so, don’t you think it’s a bit premature to start thinking about changing the PS? An aftermarket PS is unlikely to be as good as the one Sutherland includes.

And by the way, you would need two separate PSs or you would need to re-wire the unit to run. off a single PS that could supply both audio circuits.  That's a complex job.  Even to bypass the built in PSs with a pair of external PSs is not trivial.  And, as I said, you would be hard pressed to find an outboard aftermarket PS that surpasses what you already have.  The vast majority of aftermarket linear PSs are designed to outperform a wall wart or some other slightly more sophisticated design, not to compete with the linear PS of an expensive phono stage like that of the Duo.

Ron has reply to me that installing the LPS is feasible and could be done at Sutherland’s factory or by a technician upon receiving the boards. He has suggested me to stick with the current version considering the hassle tradeoff vs small improvement. 
ill go duos locos in the future. 

I assure you that the power supplies in your Duo are already "linear" type power supplies.  The term refers to a conventional method for deriving DC voltages and current to run the audio circuit. AC from the wall goes through a transformer to alter voltage and current as needed by the circuit. The voltage that appears on the PS transformer secondaries is rectified (converted to DC but still noisy, using solid state diodes, then filtered, using capacitors or a combination of inductors and capacitors to remove noise (any AC riding in the DC).  In a high end preamp like yours, the resulting DC voltages are in addition regulated.  Voltage regulation adds additional smoothing.  This has been done in audio for at least 80 years.  Only recently we have '''Switch mode" power supplies, or SMPS.  You find such SMPSs in less expensive gear but if done well, SMPSs can be very high quality. Nevertheless, audiophiles have been convinced to favor linear PSs in their higher end gear.