Substantial Upgrade


Longtime lurker, first-time poster:  My wife and I got into vinyl about five years ago and have been steadily collecting records ever since.  We love spinning records, and listen to a lot of jazz, pop, and classical music.  We started modestly with an AT LP120, and are lucky to have a friend who just happened to have a pair of Totem Rainmakers sitting in his garage collecting dust, which he gave to us, along with a TSC sub and all cables.  We have decided it is time to invest in our own system.

I've done a lot of research and read numerous threads on this topic here and elsewhere, and we've narrowed our choices down to two tables: the Rega P6 (in the $1500 price range) or the Feickert Volare (in the $3500 bracket).  Either table I'll be getting the Hana ML.  For phonostage, we've narrowed down to the MoFi UltraPhono or the Sutherland KC Vibe mk ii.  I'm hoping I can solicit opinions here on these choices and, in particular, whether the Feickert is going to make a difference for our use case.  Finally, I recognize that the speakers might be outclassed by these upgrades, but we are separately planning to move in the next year and I want to wait and see where our new listening room is going to be before investing in new speakers.    

Thanks in advance. 
bruinuclafan

Showing 1 response by p05129

Glad that miller carbon has left the thread, now you will get valuable responses. The sprout 100 is a nice piece especially for your totems. I have this same integrated in my office.
If you are just starting out, get a decent TT with a decent MM cartridge and use the builtin phono preamp in the sprout 100 until you decide what your new room will be like in the future. If your room is much larger, you will be upgrading your amp to maybe separates or another larger integrated that has a phono preamp builtin.
If you get any of the tables suggested above, you are limited by the tonearms on the quality of the cartridge you can use on them. If this is a starter system, then by all means get any of the TT's mentioned above with the Hana cartridge, you probably won't hear a difference between these tt's. Later on, if you want to upgrade to say a $3000 or more cartridge, you won't be using any of the TT's tonearms listed above. I have had over a dozen TT's over 5 decades and each 1 cost more and the later TT's used another manufacturers tonearm.