Moving Up from a Jolida JD9

I walk a couple miles in the forest with my dogs, ride my bike at least five or six miles. So, getting up is simply hard and uncomfortable for me.

Having said that, when I play an album… a couple times a week, I like the ritual. My 2,000 albums are in pristine condition. I carefully do a light cleaning, and clean the stylist. It is a fun tradition. So I listen to an hour and a half of vinyl a week, and 20 hours of streaming… with the same sound quality.

"Hope it has enough gain for the ART9xa"

based on the latest spec:

Three gain settings: 40dB, 55dB, 64dB

Ares is a great phono amp especially in it's price range.

64dB should be fine, on paper perhaps on the  lowest acceptable value. The linestage will add a little more. 

Enjoy it. XA could be my next try. Plenty of experience with the 1st gen ART9's

Great cart for the money.

Yes it is. That’s one of the other carts I’ve got stashed. Went from the ART9 to the ART9XA and kept the ART9 for a spare.
From what I’ve read about the Ares I can get about 12dB added gain by using four 12AX7s instead of two 12AX7s and two 12AU7s. I have several old stock quads of both so let the rolling begin.
I'm really looking to hearing the Ares. I've been listening to the JD9 for ten years so it should be quite a difference from what I'm used to,

Got it via UPS today. It's a really nice, well made unit. I'll probably hook it up tomorrow after I read the manual, get it set up for my cart, and decide which tubes I'm going to use in it. New toy, oh boy! 😎

Got it installed but I've got a hum that I can't get rid of. Can't figure out where it's coming from. The Jolida was dead quiet. It almost sounds like it's picking up the transformer in the outboard power supply. Everything's grounded properly. There's switches inside the unit that affect grounding but the manual doesn't say much about them. The manual for this unit really doesn't say very much about anything. It doesn't even give you a diagram as to which tubes go where. The tube sockets aren't even marked on the board. It probably will sound pretty good if I can get rid of this ground hum. Anybody got any ideas?