2. analog
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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 2 responses by lohanimal

lohanimal
659 posts
 

If it has to be new - the decks you cite have a great variation in sound style and quality.

The Rega's are a bit of a Lotus Elise to the Avid Mercedes SL. 

Do you want to buy new or second hand? For instance second hand would allow you to buy a very good 70's DD deck and then you can go to town on the cartridge and phono stage. I bought a Townshend Rock Elite for £300 and a JVC QL0 for about the same price. 

lohanimal
659 posts
 

@grislybutter 

i was once of the thought that a phono stage requires less of the budget. However - especially with MC’s they actually have the most difficult job in the amplification chain having to keep noise low and amplify the signal the most. I think that once you get to a certain level (transcription I’d say such as Linn LP12 - Roksan Xerxus - Rega RP 8 or 10) you really see a greater benefit. My analogy being that an average driver won’t make the best off an F1 car and won’t be much slower than an F1 driver - put them in an F1 car and the normal driver won’t even be able to get the brakes up to temperature. It’s a bit of an exponential ratio that can’t really be calculated in simple numbers. An average cartridge with a great phono stage would be far better than a great cartridge and an average phono stage

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