I am happy to keep the Ref Phono at this stage. I love its sound and it is quiet enough with NOS Tele E88CCs for a 0.32mV into MM. I find it as Dynamic as with the 1mV, just less noise. I have auditioned phonos up to 4x its price and some were better, but not enough for the $5000 more that I'd have to spend. Some didn't even have the Mono/Mute/Standby switches like the Ref. Anyway playing with carts is more economical and fun for me, thats until I can afford $7000 plus phonos. I do take all your input into consideration by the way. I'm just wondering if I can find a LOMC that's a good match for the Jensen SUTs to give the MC input another chance. This at approx $1000 upgrade cost on the Colibri.
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?
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?