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Tonearm recommendation

Hello all,
Recently procured a Feickert Blackbird w/ the Jelco 12 inch tonearm.
The table is really good, and its a keeper. The Jelco is also very good, but not as good as my Fidelity Research FR66s. So the Jelco will eventually hit Ebay, and the question remains do I keep the FR66s or sell that and buy something modern in the 5-6 K range. My only point of reference is my old JMW-10 on my Aries MK1, so I don't know how the FR66s would compare to a modern arm. So I'd like to rely on the collective knowledge and experience of this group for a recommendation.

Keep the FR66s, or go modern in the 5-6K range, say a Moerch DP8 or maybe an SME.

Any and all thoughts and opinions are of course much appreciated.

Cheers,      Crazy Bill
wrm0325

Showing 1 response by testpilot

testpilot
983 posts
 
There is a world of difference between the SFP-1 in any version and my unit, the Phono 1. In addition, I have the SE+ upgrades, which includes new PS lytics, new Vishay resistors, and New V-Cap TFTF and OIMP coupling caps.

It appears my budget has been increased to the 10K area, so I'm sure this is going to murky the waters somewhat.

I had the Sonic Frontiers Phono 1 and I put every shade of lipstick on that Pig and even sent to Chris Johnson for cosmetic surgery with every upgrade possible. Countless dollars spent, dozens of tubes rolled and in the end, it still was a just a Pig.

With a budget of $10K, I would highly recommend investing some of that money into a new phono stage as that will give you a greater return on sound improvement than changing out the excellent FR66s.

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