Ortofon 2m Black MM vs Benz Micro Glider S MC

[mac72]

Thanks for the offer buddy. I've just had an offer to try a few from a close friend with those same carts you mention, i didn't realise he had them. At least i get to test in my setup which is good.

I'm happy that got sold, it was a good price. I was half tempted to buy it myself just to compare it to mine.

Not sure if you heard of Paradise phonostage , it's DIY Audio project (quite sophisticated , dual mono PSU and phono stage , all on PCB's , very time consuming) finished testing and cased it up last weekend , if you fancy to hear it in the future let me know we could arrange little bake -off .
Good luck in your search , since I tried my first MC I never looked back and own four now (it's been maybe a year since I dumped Nagaoka MP200) , it's like an addiction .

[mac72]

Few pics of Paradise , I made it 3 boxes , need to tweak RIAA network bit more to make it more flat , at the moment I have slight lift between 20Hz-100Hz not much but I want it to be perfect,

[Bigman80]

That looks very very good.

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[mac72]

That looks very very good.

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Thanks , it sounds great as well , I made RIAA network on SIL sockets so it could be easily tweaked . Loading resistor are sockets as well but I'm going to use RCA socket (one in the middle) for loading plugs.

[Bigman80]

Thanks , it sounds great as well , I made RIAA network on SIL sockets so it could be easily tweaked . Loading resistor are sockets as well but I'm going to use RCA socket (one in the middle) for loading plugs.

Its very well built and the cases look great. I love the power button and will steal the inspiration and put one on the Wizard phonostage.

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[mac72]

Cases come from Modus in Italy but I replaced them with acrylic engraved panels (front and back) made by Mark (YNWOAN) , power button from E-Bay .
Actually looks very good next to McIntosh amplifier , just need o make some room on the shelf once I'm happy with how it measures .

[Bigman80]

They are nice. I'm impressed. Looks very professional.

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[postmanpat]

Not sure if you heard of Paradise phonostage , it's DIY Audio project (quite sophisticated , dual mono PSU and phono stage , all on PCB's , very time consuming) finished testing and cased it up last weekend , if you fancy to hear it in the future let me know we could arrange little bake -off .
Good luck in your search , since I tried my first MC I never looked back and own four now (it's been maybe a year since I dumped Nagaoka MP200) , it's like an addiction .

This is an interesting project, how much did it cost to build and how much time did you spend putting it together?

[mac72]

Probably around £700-£800 but I didn't keep a record of what I spend, but you need good multimeter , good transistor tester or build matching circuit, oscilloscope with at least 50MHz bandwith, signal generator with freq sweep so all in amounts to quite a lot.
Time wise to solder all in couple of weekends but transistor matching consumes lot of time , I was lucky and bought just one thousand and managed to get them within 2-3hfe, testing and tweaking another couple weekends.Only problem pcb boards are no more I bought mine from the guy in Greece.
Original design has bit of lift at high and low frequency, I made it almost flat.
Paradise is MC stage only , in my case measured gain was 62.8dB, which is bit too much for my preamplifier if I use Zyx Bloom H, Benz carts are bit better but I missed Zyx presentation hence mu latest purchase Zyx Yatra ZN low output, I got lucky and got one from the dealer with less than 50hours and distributor support.

[Firebottle]

Hi Slav, from the pictures it looks like you have your coaxial cables connected wrongly.

It looks like you have the inner conductor and outer screen the wrong way around. Usually the screen is connected to the ground tag of the sockets.