best phono stage to mate with a London Decca Super Gold cart?

The design of the Decca pickup creates an inherent electronic resonance. In the mid-1980’s I had a long conversation with the greatly-missed Harvey Rosenberg---a Decca fanatic and expert, during which he explained to me how an electronic damping circuit, created via resistive and capacitive loading of the pickup, was necessary to address and remedy the Decca’s electronic resonance.

Though the construction and build quality of the current London’s is a significant improvement on that of the old Decca’s, the pickup design’s inherent electronic resonance remains intact, still requiring an electronic damping circuit (resistance and capacitance) to provide anywhere near flat frequency response and non-ringing time-domain performance. The London Reference owners manual specifies 15kohms/220uF resistance/capacitance loading, the Super Gold 22k/220uF. Harvey used a lot more capacitance with his old Deccas. A LOT more.

The pickup’s mechanical requirements (arm tube and bearings, mechanical damping) are a whole ’nother matter!

What the Decca/London's need is not much gain (40dB is plenty) and lots of headroom. Their 5mV output is way too hot for lots of phono stages.

For solid state, the Liberty B2B-1 has both, John Atkinson finding it's overload margin about as high as he has ever measured. It retails for $1800 I believe.

For tube, the discontinued Herron VTPH-1mm is a great choice, providing 42-44dB gain (depending on tubes used) and pretty good headroom. Give Keith a call, as he sometimes has trade-ins available. You should be able to get one for $1500. The improved VTPH-2 will cost you more.

For the best performance from the Super Gold, you want to load the cartridge at 15k to 22k resistance, and 220pF of capacitance. The RB300 works pretty well with the cartridge, although an arm with a little higher mass and damping is preferable. 

I got my VTPH-1mm directly from Keith. He had taken in a -1mc in trade on a VTPH-2, and offered to convert it to a -1mm for me. I told Keith I was using it with a London cartridge, and wanted as little gain and as much overhead as the amp was capable of. He put in two 12AX7’s and two 12AT7’s to lower the gain a couple of dB (that also provides a little more headroom in the circuit), and installed 15k resistance and 220pF capacitance at my request. He also sent along another pair of the tubes providing 2dB more gain. Whatta guy!

I got the VTPH-1mm before I heard of the K&K, but checked it out once I had. It looks real good, and if I hadn’t gotten the Herron I would have gone for a K&K. Definitely worth looking into. The TRON Convergence I investigated as well, but couldn’t get as much a "feel" for from the website. The fact that topoxforddoc (see above) has the good taste and refined sensibilities :-) of a long-time Decca devotee, and highly recommends the TRON, makes it a must-check-out imo.

No matter what phono amp you get, with your Super Gold you are getting the most dynamic, immediate, "live" sound from your LP’s as is currently possible! Is your SG mounted on a Deccapod? If not, John Wright will do it to yours if you send it to him. I ordered my London SG with the Pod already installed, and it is a HUGE improvement over the old Decca top plate and mounting system.