something is wrong here, but what is it?

"09-09-03: Onhwy61
I agreed with everybody's comments about insufficient preamp gain for the cartridge, but I don't get the connection with his problems with the power tubes. Has a tube also gone bad?"
THIS COULD BE IT, YOU STILL NEED MORE GAIN, BUT NOW WITH THE BAD POWER TUBE AND THE LOSS OF POWER, YOU HAVE A MORE PRONOUNCED AND OBOVIOUS PROBLEM. IMHO

I agreed with everybody's comments about insufficient preamp gain for the cartridge, but I don't get the connection with his problems with the power tubes. Has a tube also gone bad?

Most definitly, not enough gain. David

but it wasn't like this a month ago.

Shahens,

Hi from another c-j-ophile!

I have a PV11 preamp with phono stage. When I ran my new low output MC cartridge directly into it, the sound was flat, lifeless and too low in volume. Turning the volume up made tube noise from the preamp very audible. If I had a nice tube power amp like yours I'd also expect the problems you describe. Insufficient gain is definitely your problem, the c-j phono stages are made for high output MM cartridges.

You must either change phono stages, add a stepup transformer or go back to a high output cartridge that won't perform as well.

I went the stepup transformer route. The ones from BentAudio sound great and John Chapman is very helpful with us newbies. Obviously there are others out there, many perhaps for fewer $.

Good luck!

Not enough gain, agreed.

I agree with ED, the phono stage doesn't have enough gain for the Benz Micro.

Need more gain for the Phono stage I think. Sounds like preamp driving the amp too hard (going into A2 operation?).

-Ed

Interesting. How have you connected the CJ 10a to the PF R? Did you go from tape out to a line in?