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Tavish Vintage vs Bottlehead Eros

My AES PH-1 just doesn;t have the gain for my Soundsmith Otello cartridge. I've gotten down to these two phono preamps and would love any input on them. I like a warmish musical sound with a large well defined stage. Good detail retrieval helps, but a little less won't sink the deal. Cool, analytical or a flat stage is a definitely a no go....
Tavish uses the same 6SL7s and I love their sound. They'll also tweak a build for me to bring the MM gain up to suit my needs - pretty sweet.
Bottlehead Eros is a little unknown to, but looks and reviews to be outstanding for the price. The gain is fine at 50db
If anyone
budburma

Showing 1 response by vair68robert

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vair68robert
600 posts
 
budburma 

I have a Tavish Designs Adiago with 44db gain going thru a passive preamp and was using a MM cartridge with an output of 5.5mv .
I have wanted to try a Soundsmith cartridge for a long time 
but few used ones ever came up for sale , 
at the same time I was hesitant because of the low output of 2.12mv .
When a used Carmen ES MKII came on the market I jumped at it 
and to my suprise NO problem with the lower output ,
as a matter of fact my volume setting only went up from 
12-13 to 13-14  when I was expecting it to be up to 18-20 out of 24 !




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