Retip or try new

blisshifi,

Thanks for your suggestions on ART9s. My phono pre is Pass Xono, which provides 71db gain (SE, or 76 balanced); thought it would be good enough for XA. ART20 seems to be in a different league (price wise at least)- given that I have different life priorities these days I would be happy with something lesser but still descent.

@pindac

thanks for the comments. Sounds like rebuilding is worth considering economic-wise. Even it doesn’t sound the “same” - which I don’t remember anyway since SQ degrades overtime, as long as SQ is in a similar league it could be a very good deal than buying new.

@hilroy48

My deck is mid-spec Linn LP12 with quite some modifications over the years - Lingo 4, Khan top plate, trampoline 2, Green street subchassis, Ekos 1 arm with updated bearing ( says it’s Ekos 2), Cirkus bearing. Didn’t have chance to A/B with other decks in the recent past. I learned how to tune it up, but didn’t get to it for a while now. Staying with the same cart saves the efforts of alignment a little bit as Linn arm / cart has a third screw.

@mijostyn

thank you for the comment. I’ll ask Soundsmith if they offer rebuild (not just retipping ), as I suspect the rubber had gone old.

@blisshifi

I had not tried the highest gain with XONO. Since Linn Akiva is medium-output (0.45mv), i had been using just 60 or 64 db gain.