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SUT With a Manley Steelhead RC?

I own a Manley Steelhead RC and am using as my main cartridge a My Sonic Lab Signature Platinum.  MSL makes their own SUT that I have been thinking about purchasing, but I'm wondering if it's necessary with the Manley.  I find the Steelhead to be the best sounding phono preamp I've ever owned, but I'm always wondering about ways to make it even better.

I sent a message to Bob at Bob's Devices, but his reply to me was ambiguous.  He made it sound at first as if there would be little sonic benefit, and also seemed to say that his SUT would be superior to the one inside the Steelhead.  I tried to ask more questions but he went radio silent after that, and if I try to call their phone number I can't seem to talk to anyone.  This is not a complaint about their company, BTW.  I've heard nothing but good things about his products.

Any useful advice is appreciated!

128x128snackeyp

Showing 1 response by rooze

rooze's avatar
rooze
567 posts
 

I’ve a Steelhead RC that has been the one constant in my system for several years. I ran it as a preamp for a little while but prefer it into an active preamp. I use the Veloce Litho battery pre that has been mentioned in this thread and also have the Saetta battery monoblocks.

A while back I was using a lomc, an Audio Tekne MC 6310 rated 0.1mv. I had the matching Audio Tekne SUT. The Steelhead has tons of gain even on the MM. I could run the 0.1mv Audio Tekne through the MM input and felt it sounded better than using it with the matching SUT. However I configured the ground arrangement there was always just a tiny amount of low level hum with the sut in circuit. It’s possible that it would have been inaudible but for the battery powered Veloce but I didn’t have another linestage on hand to try it.

Anyway, I think with a unit like the Steelhead there wasn’t anything to be gained using the SUT (‘scuse the pun).

By the way, I stupidly sold the Audio Tekne to “move up” to a Benz LP-S. What a mistake that was. The Audio Tekne is still the best cart I’ve owned in my system.

Rooze

ps - love the two YouTube vids someone posted above, one is of my old system before changing out the speakers.

 

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