Sonic Frontiers Phono One: Gain too high?


Hello,

I'm trying to help a fellow 'phile troubleshoot a problem with his Phono One. He claims that he cannot use anything except very low output cartridges with his Sonic Frontiers phono stage because he has the "high gain" version. Evidently there were three different versions of the SF Phono One: a low gain, normal, and high gain? I looked through the manual and on page eight it describes how to set the dip switches for various cartridges, even has two user defined positions (using add-on resistors and capacitors). No idea why he couldn't fiddle with these settings to dial in the step up.

So... can a "high gain" Phono One be set up to accomodate high output moving coil or moving magnet pickups???? Thanks much, Jeff
jeffloistarca

Showing 2 responses by kennyb

The gain cannot be changed by the end-user. I used to own the "high gain" version, which had 62db of gain. This should be used with MC cartridges of no more than .6mv of gain.

For more information:

http://www.anthemav.com/OldSitev1/pages/phono.html
Yes the issue is overload. I have one LP in particular that is cut very hot. This LP was unplayable using my .6 mv Clearaudio Victory because of distortion. I had no such problem playing the LP with the .5 mv Helikon.