2. analog
  3. 1078837313

Balanced XLR Turntable / Tonearm

Hi all. I'm moving to a fully balanced amplification system (phone preamp to preamp to amp -- all Sierra). I have an inexpensive turntable today -- the AR Turntable (1984) with a Linn Basik Plus arm and an Adcom Hexacoil moving coil cartridge. The Linn Basik has a 5 pin DIN type connector with a separate ground and I had planned to "cut and paste" an XLR cable to it to connect to the phono preamp. However, my analog system is not that great and my other alternative is to go to a different table/tonearm setup. Are there any that you would recommend and are not too expensive (e.g., under $4k) that already have balanced outputs? Of course, I could always "cut and paste" other setups but it would be easier if the tonearm wires were not connected to ground, so that could work too. Thanks.
ozfly

Showing 1 response by oldears

oldears
386 posts
 
I have rewired my alphason tonearm with discovery stranded Cu cable directly soldered to Kimber Silver streak balanced. I used a silver wire to the + & - for each channel. On the rca end I attached the Cu ground to the outside rca. The other end of the Kimber Cu wire is not connected. This amounts to a phantom balanced connection. I have maintained the separate ground from the tonearm to the Oracle TT base to the ground connection on the preamp. I was pleasantly surprised when I finished the experiment that I have NO noise when using a 0.4 mv moving coil, now in 2 different houses.
BTW I agree with the Gmorris response and am ready to rewire the present arm to XLR if I ever spring for a phono preamp which will take fully balanced.
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