Vinyl sounds a bit thin and slightly strident.

Thanks for all the responses everyone, this is why I love the 'gon. I'm loading the cartridge @ 2.5K each leg of the XLR and I popped out the 220pF caps so it's only the cable capacitance in the circuit, It's been a while so I can't fully remember the justification for this move. So, I got aggressive with raising the VTA today and a lot of good things happened so I'm very hopeful. It dawned on me demagnetizing the cartridge may help because it's an MC but I want to get something passive such as a test record to do that. I have a handful of titles on 180g but I haven't bought a lot of them. I have to keep in mind I play quite a bit of used 120g vinyl mass market stuff because I'm fortunate to have a record convention come to town every 3 months and I can pick up LP's/12" singles of stuff I wouldn't think of paying full price for. Either they're titles unavailable on CD or albums containing only a track or 2 I care for. I may just have to give a different set of cables a try too. Thanks again guys!

Dgarretson, I like what I'm hearing... My PH-2 has Infinicaps in it now, not sure the model. My LS-7 has Rel-Caps so I suspect they could be upgraded. I spent some time yesterday and rechecked overhang using the VPI supplied protractor and made some adjustments there and subsequently to the VTF and VTA. I had noticed before the changes that the VTF was too low and I don't know how that could be unless either the retaining screw came loose on the counterweight and it moved or my digital scale wasn't calibrated or working properly when I set the arm up. That was a large source of the stridency I was hearing due to mistracking. However, after changing those settings the characteristic that still is lacking is more body/fullness in the midbass. It's not severe but this tends to detract from the emotional richness during playback for me. Do you still think that is a capacitor issue? I haven't experimented with doing any changes to capacitors before although I'm open to suggestions. Can changing the loading affect the midbass? I thought that loading would only change the high frequency rolloff. The cart is loaded at 2.5K Ohm and the capacitance of the Cardas Neutral Reference Phono.

Awesome! Thanks. Any thoughts on the component parts and tubes for the LS-7? Jafox(listed above) had stated this:

One thing to do right away is get rid of those ARC supplied EH tubes. These are almost as horrible as the Sovtek. You will not believe how significant Telefunken, Mullard, Amperex, etc., 6922/6DJ8 tubes would make on the LS7. The midrange textures, decays and smoothness in the mids will be quite a surprise.

I agree because I feel the Sovteks were better than the EH tubes if memory serves me correctly. My question is which one to choose?

Any component upgrades would be easy for me to perform. I don't really want to have to change out gear if I don't have to. I feel I could improve on what I already have.
Where do you trust getting the component parts you mentioned?

I have a question about effective arm mass and loading at the end but let me start by saying this.

Bob, I'm using stock cables on all my gear. The ARC stuff does not have user removable AC cables and I'm not planning on delving that far into tweaking by removing the stock cables at the moment. The only device I have concerning power is a Furman power strip that everything is plugged into. I am familiar with the benefits of using power devices having borrowed one to try on my system in the past and I'd like to own one in the future.

Jafox/Dgarretson, I like the valuable information you've written. I will have to keep your posts close so when I'm going to plunk down some cash for new tubes I have some sort of reference. Plus I'd like to give the resistors a try. Thanks!

The cartridge is 9.5g and it's looking for a medium to high mass arm according to Benz's spec sheet. However, I'm not particularly sure what the JMW 9 Sig. arm mass is. Also, I've figured out that other than light bass there is a response bump at around 3.5K that gives music a more tense feel. I'm sure it doesn't help that the most sensitive area of hearing lies right around that frequency. My question is will changing the loading resistance help this bump? I'm loading at around 2.5K/60pF(cable capacitance), the cartridge Z is 95ohms, Benz says load >1000ohm but I've heard about a 2.5/1 loading ratio which would put it @ 237.5. What should I expect if I drop loading to that even though Benz suggests 1K minimum?