Help me pick a phono, pre and cart

I find with the herron that you really don't need to go crazy on vintage Tubes. Keith has done an excellent job voicing it with the Tubes he provides.

That has been my feeling as well.  While in the case of various tube power amps I have used over the years I have found small signal tubes to make dramatic differences, and in most applications I have found tubes from the 1940s to 1960s to be preferable to recent production, I have never felt any desire to tinker with the voicing Keith has achieved with the tubes he supplies in his phono stage.

Best regards,
-- Al 

Sounds good!  The version he recommended, which provides the lower of the two gain alternatives that are offered, is by far the version that is purchased most often.  It should be suitable for all but the lowest output cartridges, certainly for those rated at 0.3 mv and I suspect for cartridges having output ratings significantly less than that.

My guess is that with the 20K load you'll be sacrificing a bit of the deep bass extension the Quatro CT is capable of, but since that would just be on an interim basis the VTPH-2A sounds like a plan!

Best regards,
-- Al

@jetson

The most significant adverse consequence of running the Herron or the ARC phono stages that were mentioned into your Ayre amp is, IMO, likely to be weakness in the deep bass region. That is because the output impedance of those phono stages at deep bass frequencies undoubtedly rises to much higher values than the nominal spec, due to their use of a coupling capacitor at their outputs. (The impedance of a capacitor increases as frequency decreases).

Also, I see that the speakers you’re planning to purchase this year are spec’d at +/- 2 db down to 24 Hz, so their excellent deep bass extension is likely to make the issue more apparent than it would be with many other speakers.

I seem to recall a report here some time ago of reasonably good results running the Herron into 30K, although I don’t recall what speakers were being used. But I haven’t ever seen any reports about the Herron’s performance into an impedance as low as 20K. Also, I don’t know what the value (the number of microFarads) is of the coupling capacitor that is used in the design, which would help to quantify the issue.

I suspect that a phone call or email to Keith Herron would be the best way of determining if the issue is something you would want to live with until you obtain a new preamp. I’m sure he will give you a sincere and well-founded opinion.

A few months ago, btw, Keith did explicitly recommend to another member that his phono stage not be used in conjunction with a 10K load, citing the likelihood of compromised dynamics. See one of the posts by Uberwaltz dated 4-2-2018 in this thread:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/ugraditus-is-calling-again-phono-stage?page=2

Good luck. Regards,
-- Al

From the specs provided at arcdb.ws for both the PH-6 and the PH-8:

Output impedance:  200 ohms Unbalanced. Recommended load 50K-100K ohms and 100pF. (10K ohms minimum and 2000pF maximum.)

From the manual for the Herron VTPH-2A:

We recommend that the VTPH-2A be used with a line stage having an input impedance of 50,000 ohms or higher for optimum performance.

All three of those phono stages provide only unbalanced outputs.  The input impedance of the unbalanced inputs of the Ayre AX-7e is 20K, as I mentioned earlier.

Regards,
-- Al

I'd be careful about impedance compatibility between the phono stage that you choose and your Ayre integrated amp.  The Ax-7e's input impedance of 20K unbalanced and 40K (20K per phase) balanced is too low to be optimal with either the Herron or ARC phono stages that have been suggested.  Or with many other tube-based phono stages, for that matter.

Also, +1 re the ART9, which I use in conjunction with a Herron VTPH-2.

Good luck.  Regards,
-- Al