Phono Stage - The great analog tragedy

Back in the early 60s, 70s and up to the mid 80s, the primary source of music was Phono or Cassette tape

A dedicated $10,000 phono stage wasn't even a thing back then.

No. This is a myopic view of the world.

Example - Final Audio released a diamond cantilevered low output moving coil in 1974 along with dedicated phono stages shortly thereafter. the stylus tip and cantilever were cut from a 1 carat natural diamond.

There were plenty of others.

You need to look a bit further than Sears, Roebuck & Co or Wal Greens for your audio history.

The way I experienced it in the US on the east coast, the Supex LOMC started the LOMC craze in the early to mid 70s. Harry Pearson and his Absolute Sound mag had a lot to do with it. SUTs were not in vogue. Mark Levinson marketed a prepreamp designed by John Curl, the JC1. Most audiophiles owned MM phono stages and therefore needed the gain boost. $1000 for a phono stage or a full function preamp more likely, was stratospheric. The Infinity Servo Statik 1 for $2000 was among the most expensive speakers on the market. In 1972, a new Porsche 911S was about $12,000.

The way I experienced it in the US on the east coast, the Supex LOMC started the LOMC craze in the early to mid 70s.

You obviously didn't run with the Ortofon crowd.

Ortofon sold plenty of LOMC's in the US from the late 1940's onwards along with matching SUT's. Shure, Stanton and Empire all had MC offerings in the 1960's. I also have a NOS Neat V1000 MC from that period amongst my cache of MC's.

Excel Sound ( OEM ), Sugano ( Koetsu ), Takeda San ( Miyabi ) all started producing excellent MC's in the 1960's.

EMT ( Germany ) started their excellent range of MC cartridges in the late 1950's early 60's.

Leak and Tannoy  ( England ) produced excellent moving coil cartridges in the 1950's and 60's

I reported “the way I experienced it”, and my experience is dictated by the fact that I didn’t become a bona fide audiophile until about 1970. Yes, I knew nothing about Ortofons sold in the 1950s. Shure, Grado, and ADC high output cartridges dominated the US market until the mid 70s.But I do maintain that J Gordon Holt in the late 60s and then HP in the 70s, both journalists, virtually created audiophilia as we now know it in the US.

Forgot Pickering and Stanton as dominant cartridge brands in the US in the 70s and before.

What tragedy? If phono stages over the years were as deficient as OP suggests, how in hell did the vinyl LP format survive these many years?

Extracts are about Phonostages Produced in the late 60's and up to the mid 70's

Spec quotation from Mid 70's  

 " distortion was lower than the residual distortion of the test equipment, so for the development of this model it was necessary to start using a computer-controlled audio analyzer capable of analyzing harmonic distortion to a 0.00005% order, and with this equipment the total harmonic distortion measured from the phono (MM) input to the Record Out terminals (20Hz — 20Khz, total from second to tenth order) and shown in the specifications was an astonishing 0.0007%. "

A Spec from the 1960's 

( 30 Hz to 15 kHz (± 0.3 dB deviation from RIAA curve)

The same Brand from the early 70's

 Phono : within ± 0.3 dB of the RIAA standard curve

Different Brand from the later 70's

The Link has a timeline for evolving products becoming available for Analogue Replays both pre/post RIAA.

It could be read as when the evolving Transducer was ready for a Teacher, the evolving Phon' appeared and Vice-Versa.

I'm sure those who have a knowledge of how a circuit works and are not historians, will see the earliest versions of circuitry that may be a favourite. 

https://www.darlingtonlabs.com/audio-history/blog-post-title-two-3nr8k

@dover 

Not sure where you're going with your comment, buddy.

Never got anything audio or audio info from Sears or Wall Green.

Keep your assumptions to yourself hotdog. 

I don't dispute that there were some very good MC cartridges back in the 70s and 80s I had a medium output MC Audio Quest cartridge in1983 that cost nearly $1,300. It worked just fine through the phono stage on my Audible Illusions pre. The few Audio Philes that I knew, using a low output MC cartridge, as mentioned by lewm, used a rather inexpensive gain, not an expensive, dedicated phono stage.  

Let me make the OP more direct. Suggest 3 phonostages built in the golden era (1950 - 1985) which would do justice to a $30k turntable with a $5k cartridge (assuming appropriate Tonearm) today

Pose the same question vis a vis cartridges, amplifiers, and speakers.  One would have equal difficulty with a definitive answer.  Why then do you use the term "golden era"?  It's all fun and games.

No serious effort was made to make top quality phonostages to match the remaining analog innovations.

@pani  I don't agree with your opening post or this one above. We designed our phono section in 1988 and it was a year before our line section was developed; then we introduced our MP-1 preamp, which was fully differential and balanced. By your premise that fully balanced phono section didn't exist. But it did. There were a good number of very good phono sections for high end audio in the 1980s. 

I think if you examine the Harmon Kardon Citation 1 (1958) you'll see a fairly elaborate phono section for the era. LOMC cartridges really didn't exist at the time so that phono section was for MM cartridges, and it was extremely competent. 

In relation to the 50's and Phonostage Technology, the Hard Medium Embedded Data was slow to grow in large volume for the the info available that was able to be embedded. Potentially meaning, without a consistency in what to work with. meant that design was not as forthcoming as a later time when there was a stabilisation of what is to be a embedded data.

I suggest it was a time when certain individuals with a capability were unsure where to with an advancing design.

This is suggested, as RIAA is recorded in historical accounts, as being Trickled into the Industry practices as Standardized EQ, reports suggest the take up was not immediate and become more popular across years of the decade.

Then there data that enabled Stereo that arrived at the latter part of the decade.

The Question is at what time was the industry in the know Stereo was not too far into the future, as this might of been a brakes on influence.  

The Question is at what time was the industry in the know Stereo was not too far into the future, as this might of been a brakes on influence.  

@pindac Stereo reel to reel was available as early as 1954 using 'staggered head' format. 

@pani 

Good topic for discussion, thanks.  I do not particularly believe that the lack of good phono stages capable of supporting low output moving coil cartridges in the "golden era" e.g. pre 1980 was a tragedy.  The better amplifiers and preamplifiers of the day did an excellent job at cleanly amplifying the signal of the better Moving Magnet cartridges of that era, 

Aside from the Denons and Ortofon SPU (which each historically used SUTS for the first amplification stage), LOMCs did not start becoming popular until after 1980 or so.  In which case it was an analog tragedy that neither existed in the golden age.  

However the industry has since responded quite well as there are a number of very high quality internal and external phono preamps that can support the best of the best LOMCs.  I would argue the golden age of vinyl playback is NOW.  

I could never understand how many audiophiles buy cartridges that cost more than 10 thousand dollars and at the same time don't care on the quality of phono preamplifiers.

I'm whish share my journey with external phono stages and the significant improvements I've experienced.

My first external phono stage was a Croft Micro tube preamplifier with a passive RC RIAA circuit and a cathode follower preamplifier output stage, which I acquired in 2002. Later, I purchased a used EAR 834p. Despite their different RIAA designs (active and passive), both the Croft and EAR offered similar sound quality, though I slightly preferred the EAR.

My next project was inspired by Romy The Cat's "End of Life" (EOL) phonostage, which is based on the EAR 834p schematics. The EOL design features a superior power supply (with a parallel stabilizer and LCLC filter) and air RIAA capacitors, which are improvements over the original 834p. I built this into a single box unit, and it was a significant upgrade from the original 834p. Over the years, I continued to refine it with further upgrades, including a larger and better power supply, as well as improved cathode and output capacitors.

More recently, I rebuilt the EOL into a two-box system, and the resulting difference in sound quality has exceeded my expectations. 

This experience has reinforced that while the RIAA schematic is crucial, the implementation truly makes a huge difference. My current EAR 834p version sounds vastly different from the original.

While what you wrote, and what I am about to write, has absolutely nothing to do with the "topic", such as it is a topic, I will add that I too have found that upgrading the capacitors used in the RC type RIAA network makes a tremendous difference, BUT one must be certain to use exactly the same values of C as was used by the designer, else the RIAA will be inaccurate. (Even high quality capacitors are only specified to be within a few percent of the marked value; you have to measure each one individually to reproduce the curve.) This really means you need an accurate capacitance meter first to read the values used in the original, and then you need the meter to select from among the replacement capacitors, to find exact values. It's very worthwhile if you have the patience. And of course, PS upgrades almost always help if done right.

(I kind of wonder how you got away with air capacitors since I understand that they can be unstable in value due to humidity, etc.)

In my phonostage are only two small air capacitors 330pf and 110pf are important for RIAA equalization accuracy. All other - interstage, output, cathode filament PS and B+ PS capacitors values are not important in this schematics.

I setted up RIAA air capacitors with capacitor meter. But I don't take into account air humidity. Air capacitor advantage: the dielectric is not sensitive to polarity changes.

Air capacitor advantage: the dielectric is not sensitive to polarity changes.

Neither is mylar, polypropylene, polystyrene or Teflon. 

Or ceramic