Benz Ebony TR or Lyra Kleos SL?


...or a custom 0.18mV Colibri XCW?
Some background, I have the old ARC Ref Phono that I've been running a custom H.O. Colibri XCP (1.0mV) into the MM input on. This because I found the previous = or less than 0.32mV cartrides I had to sound better into MM bypassing the Jensen SUTs in the MC input. From research I believe the reason to be that the SUT config might prefer carts of less than 5ohms or loading of ~100ohms. There might be other reasons, but I'm itching to revisit a LOMC and the 3 above are on my shortlist. The 3rd option (XCW) would have more than 15ohms resistance though, but VdH say they recommend ~100ohms thus its inclusion. Your thoughts?
vusi_khumalo

Showing 1 response by pani

Recently heard a Lyra Delos and a Skala into two different phonostages, one was a 47 Labs phonocube and the other was a Shindo Masseto in-built phonostage. The Shindo uses a custom Lundahl SUT inside while the 47 Labs is a clean active phono. I cannot say one had an advantage over the other, though the Shindo clearly had the edge when it came cartridge matching, especially low output impedance cartridges. The TR "desperately" needs a SUT though. Dont try to use the TR direct into the active phono, it is a very very tough route to go that way. Rather a nice Lundahl SUT into your ARC MM phonostage will be a simple and direct way to get very high performance out of the TR.

Anyway I prefer the Lyra to the TR :-).