Best investment; cartridge or line stage?


Alrighty fellow hifi aficionados, I tried to find a sub on this topic but failed. Here is my bang for the buck question: assuming money spent on either option will be within spitting distance of each other, where am I likely to get more bang for my buck? By investing in a new line stage or investing in a new cartridge. I am currently running a Sutherland TX vibe line stage with a rega aria cartridge on a rega p6 turntable. Appreciate your input! Current system is McIntosh MA252 integrated, rega p6 tt and Martin Logan Vantages.

milo0812

Showing 1 response by ghdprentice

Great question. in general, the way I look at investing in analog: you must balance the quality of the turntable, tone arm, and cartridge with the phonostage. Typically after an upgrade my investment in tt + tone arm + cartrige = the investment in the phonostage. Your stuff looks fairly balanced at this point… maybe the cartrige look a bit light..

For much of my life the phonostage was holding back the performance of my tt. I had bought a stereophile best cheap $200 (1980) phonostage… and it sounded simply terrible. I quickly traded up and up to an AudioResearch PH 2… then upgraded over and over. It wasn’t until the PH8 that I felt it stopped getting in the way (at the time I had a VPI Aries / Van den Hull Frog $5K + $2.5K.. something like that). Now my table is around $20K and so is my phonostage. Very well matched.

 

I have known folks to put a $12K cartridge on a $6K tt with a $10K phonostage to great effect. Or a $12K cartridge on a $5K tt with a $3K phonostage and I was sure there was a huge amount of sound quality missing. Anyway, no hard answer, but from my experience, do not go cheap on the phonostage.

 

So, you are considering a new phonostage? Keeping what I said, I guess, I would do a very significant cartridge upgrade, with an eye to upgrade the phonostage at some future date.