best phono stage under 10k
Sounds like you may find van den Hul’s The Grail interesting. Current mode, extremely low noise solid state phono preamplifier with external power supply. Highly regarded: Michael Fremer compared it with admiration to his ~$50k CH Precision P1+X1. - Colin disclaimer: I’m a vdH dealer in Nashville, TN. https://gestalt.audio |
$10K!!!???? Oh my, there are many SS phono stages on the market that are exceptional for a lot less than $10K. I went through a few, Lehmann, Slee., Project, and settled on Gold Note. Might be better out there, but it's got fabulous reviews and for good reason. Very adjustable, and on the fly. I too have an antenna behind my house, as in right behind the wall where my system is. No interference what so ever with the Gold Note. My $0.02 worth. |
I thought the major issue here was eliminating RF from the adjacent radio transmitter. I am fortunate enough that I have no such problems, living in the industry-less Washington DC area; there are some huge radio and TV station towers in town, but the closest to me is at least 5-6 miles from my house. Therefore, I have never had to tackle the problem head on. However, I am a very longstanding user of Ralph's MP1. I love that thing. Besides thinking about shielding built into the unit of choice, you also want to use shielded phono cables, and since shielding raises cable capacitance and since cables per se are antennae, keep the phono cables and all other cabling as short as possible. I'd also suggest a phono stage/linestage with a separate outboard power supply, a la the MP1 and others. Keep in mind the basic fact that tubes are no more likely to bring in RFI than are transistors, and maybe less so because of relatively foreshortened bandwidth, as I mentioned above. Eliminating RFI is mostly about careful design and build. If you're in the Herron price range, and if you want balanced (I do), I would also suggest you take a look at the fully balanced Atma-sphere MP3. It's a candy mint and a breath mint; you won't need a separate linestage. |
As a designer of phonostages (both solid-state and tube), I can unequivocally state that RF interference is more of an issue with solid-state circuits. The reason being parasitic diodes inherent in opamps or transistor stages that end up rectifying (aka demodulating) radio signals. This is nowhere as bad with tubes. Yes, both can catch RF if the source is close enough (I developed the Trumpet Reference with an FM tower (94.7MHz) just up the hill, so I know), but tubes are far less susceptible. |
