EAT E-Glo Petite Hybrid phono stage

Thanks for the input! I'll give it a few more days and see how things shape up. Will report back later in the week.

I’m interested in your feedback as well echore. I was in the same position a few weeks ago with a max $1500 budget (or so). In the end I decided to buy an American made product, the Sutherland 20/20 with their LPS power supply. Yes it was about $800 more but I don’t think I’ll ever have to upgrade again (famous last words I know). It’s hard to demo this stuff in good times, basically impossible now. So....for what it’s worth I know Ron Sutherland has been doing this for a long time and has many great reviews and makes these things in the . Sounds damn good with my Dyanvector 20x2l.

I wanted to follow up to my previous comments now that I've had the Petit for a few weeks:
The Petit responds very well to tube rolling with the caveat that phono-grade tubes MUST be used. It is very sensitive to tube noise, so noise-graded tubes are essential. The stock tubes, which appear to be Slovakian JJ type 12AX7s, are very quiet, however I found them to be lacking depth and space. Out of several matched sets, new production Gold Lions were far and above the better sounding tube in my system. They had more depth, space, and female vocals were simply outstanding, goosebump territory. I'm currently using some new Tung Sols, and they are nice, but don't have that lifelike vocal midrange that the Gold Lions do. So, if you have a Petit, tube rolling can be of great benefit as long as you are using the best noise-graded tubes possible. I look forward to rolling some more exotic tubes in the coming months and will report back on those results.

In addition to rolling, I recently replaced the stock wall wart with a nice linear power supply (SBooster). The results were very subtle, but gave me the impression of a more organized soundstage (especially during complex passages) with slightly more depth. The noise floor was also slightly improved, but is still very dependent on the tubes being used. For me, this was also a worthwhile upgrade.

To sum things up, I probably would not have kept the Pettit had I not been able to roll the tubes and improve the power supply. Those two "upgrades" gave me the results I had hoped for and more, and make the Petit perform at the level I need for my system. The upgrades I did bring the Petit to $2,000, so that must be considered. My testing was done using MC carts: Hana SL, AT-ART9, and AT-OC9/III. 65db gain seems to be the sweet spot for all these carts.

[please excuse my bad English]

E.A.T E-Glo Petit (2019) vs Pro-Ject Phono Box RS2 (2021)?

I have to make a decision rapidly.Did someone heard the new Pro-Ject’s flagship: the RS2?Pro-Ject and E.A.T are sisters companies. the EAT E-glo Petit is manufactured by Pro-Ject ( < Ken Kessler, in HiFi News).NB: the EAT E-glo Petit has been compared by an Audiogon member to the tubed Pro-Ject phono box DS2, but the latter uses op amplifiers, no discrete components as the E-glo does.

FEATURES COMPARISON
The Phono Box RS2 >< EAT E-glo Petit are very different though (to be displayed on a larger screen than a smartphone’s):
solid state >< hybrid (tubes + solid state); fully balanced >< unbalanced; BOTH are: highly configurable and use discrete components.

In this table (in French!), I tried to sum up the differences to have a clearer view over those two devices.

CONTEXT:-turntable Pre-Audio DE1800NG (terrific affordable linear air arm turntable)- cartridge Ortofon 2M Black LVB- amplifiers: NuPrime AMG-PRA & AMG-STA- Speakers Harbeth M30.2 Anniversary (terrific midrange and treble)MY NEEDS:-very beautiful and lifelike midrange & treble.-holographic soundstage-bass is not that important (limited by the speakers anyway)-balanced (XLR) mode is just a nice to have (no must have at all)
[sorry for the layaout, the website packs my very clear and readable layout and all paragraphs are now coggled together - a pain in the A...]

My wife has the Pro-ject Tube DS2 phono pre. We put at least 7-8 different sets of tubes in it, some current production and some NOS. Of the current production tubes, Mullards from Upscale audio sounded best. But one day. I took a gamble on some Baldwin (RAYTHEON) NOS 1961 12ax7 tubes off of eBay. These things took it to a much higher level! Fantastic. They are amazing. Extremely low grain. Sweet high end and yet detailed. Bass for days! Very good gain. Much better than any other tube I’ve tried and much better than my former Pro-ject Phono Box RS that I compared it to. The RS sounds somewhat mechanical in comparison. I like the tubes so much that I bought a back up pair and have no desire to look any further. The best part is they only cost around $60 a pair. My system audio is professionally calibrated and so I am mainly hearing the differences the tubes themselves contribute to the sound. You just can’t go wrong with these tubes.