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If you had $12k / £10k to upgrade your analogue front-end...

Hi all,

I am upgrading my system in my listening room bit-by-bit. This room is for focused listening of music only. No movies. In the future I will be looking looking to upgrade my analogue front-end and am thinking of a budget of around $12k / £10k for a turntable, tonearm, cart and phono stage/pre-amp. I listen to all sorts of music from electronic, bass-heavy vinyl, jazz, hip-hop, rock (new and old), ambient (Cinematic Orchestra, Nils Frahm etc...) and lots of soul/funk type tracks. So quite varied.

If you had $12k/£10k to spend, what combination of turntable, tonearm, cart and phone stage/pre-amp would you go for? I'm looking for suggestions to help with my research. I'm unsure what the balance should be between them. For example, should I go for a Rega Planar 10 with Aphelion 2 cart (£6,840) and give myself just over £3k to spend on a phono stage. Or spend less on the cart (Rega Planar 10 with Apheta 3 is £4,950) and get a more expensive phono stage.

Turntable brands I've been thinking of are Rega, Clearaudio, Technics, VPI, AVID, Thorens, Michell Engineering, VPI, SME etc... but don't really know where to start.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

cainullah

Showing 1 response by jerryg123

jerryg123's avatar
jerryg123
3,429 posts
 

Actually the phono section in the 390 is quite excellent. You could live with it for a good while. Save some money and put it into the TT and Cart. Thorens 1600 and what ever cart floats your boat. A Goldring Ethos works very nice with the TD1600 or 1601.

I love Thorens and have a I have a 44 year old TD145 that just perfect and sounds as good as my ClearAudio Concept Innovation. Both have MP 500 carts love higher end MP/MI over MC. 
 

Just my 2c worth but you should audition a lot of tables with that much cash to burn. 

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