Tube Phono-Stage question.

Buy used.It is possible that a different set of tubes would hield different results.
Had you experimented with loading?

My advice would be to save up your cash, and then send your Ayre K-1xe back to Ayre to have the phono stage boards installed. For $1,600 (I assume the price for the boards did not change with their last round of price hikes), this is a great phono stage. I upgraded from the ARC (tubed) PH-3 phono stage, and the phono boards in the Ayre are clearly much better. Much quieter, more resolution, and great frequency response throughout the entire frequency range.

FYI, I know a guy who has the Ayre phono boards and he bought a ASR Basis Exclusive phono stage, (one of the best phono stages around according to just about everyone, and one of my favorites, as my friend uses it). He told me that the ASR is better, but not a lot better. He says that for the money, the Ayre's phono boards are an incredible value.

In looking at your system, you have a pretty dang good system, and using a low price phono stage is clearly going to be the weak link in your system, IMHO. It is my opinion that having as good a phono stage as possible is one of the best upgrades you can make to your analog source. (I have been using the Ayre K-1xe (and its internal phono boards) for several years, and I have not had the urge to upgrade beyond it.)

Two things I should tell you though:

One, the good news is that by using the internal phono boards, you can eliminate the cost of the interconnect cables between the preamp and the phono preamp. (And since good cables can cost a bundle, this will help pay for the cost of the boards!)

Two, and now for the bad news, (well, probably bad news for you, but it was not for me), is that the internal phono stage of the Ayre only accepts balanced (XLR) terminations. Charles Hansen believes (and I agree with him), that running your turntable in balanced mode is the way to go. This might mean that you will need to use RCA-XLR adapters. (I did this for a couple of years, with very little sonic affect. I have since had my Vector tonearm terminated with XLRs to eliminate that additional connection.)

Those are my two cents worth anyway.
Good Luck in your search!

Thank you for the info and recommendations! I have about $500 bucks give or take to play with at the moment! I just bought the TT and cartridge last month. I will most likely be looking to purchase the Ayre Acoustics phono stage when I have the money in about six months. I just really want to get a little more out of my current set up right now.

My dealer has a really good trade up policy where they will give you 100% of the retail value of your phono stage (if purchased from their store) to put towards a new phono stage. So, it isn't as if I am wasting money, but the mushy bass kind of bothers me. I really like the open and wide sound-stage of the tubes but the lack of detail in the bass is not so great! Pro-Ject does have another tube phono-stage that allows you to adjust the loading. I do not no what that will do for me as analog is new to me.

Thanks for the help!

Well was going to chime in earlier but figured why, since you said you would rather NOT pay 500 for something, however now you are saying you have 500 to play with…. Anyway you want the best Tube based unit at 500 or 2000 on the market right now with all the adjustments of a good MC and MM stage with extra power (gain), Look up the Jolida JD-9a it’s a newer unit and only been around for a short period of time, but you will find a bunch of reviews… Mine after modifications seen in link below has not been matched by anything I have heard or played with up to 5000, which even in bone stock form is not a slouch of a unit.

check out mine and look it up on google and your basic audio review sites including 6moons and several others for more info and good positive feedback on the unit, they come up rare used and normally used go for about only 50 to 100 bucks less than new which is only 449.00, I have the newer version and of course it is tweaked out. But to also answer your question the phono stage will have a large impact on your analog experience, and I have not found any Solid state units yet that were totally dimensional with good bass impact as a good tube unit, as a matter of fact most tube units I have used have far greater bass load and punch. This one happens to be of a rarer breed its a Hybrid so you could say you get the best of both worlds.

http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/index.php?topic=62730.msg567889#msg567889

The ProJect Tube Box 11 SE was tested by HIFICRITIC, which takes no ads, and did very well, outperforming the Graham Slee and PS Audio among others. Its score was 45 as opposed to the PS's 15 and 20something for the Slee. Don't use the subsonic filter as it severely degrades the sound.