Originally Posted by
Marco
Something to work on then, perhaps?.........
Therefore, for me, something intrinsic/fundamental is going on, allowing the combination of MM stage+SUT (or head amp), when all else is equal, to 'ace' a standalone MC stage.
Marco.
Well, to follow on from Oliver's tease, and Marco's question above, there has been a breakthrough in the design of my JFET cascode MC input.
A bit of a double epiphany has been experienced today with the help of Oliver's TT/arm/cartridge excellent 'front end' and the use of my cobbled up valve head amp.
The first epiphany was dropping Telefunken valves into the Firebottle Monoblocks. Both of our jaws were on the floor The raise in performance was outstanding.
Prior to this I had suggested connecting my valve headamp into the MM input to isolate the JFET MC input from the signal chain, without really expecting much of a change. How wrong I was
The distortion level dropped, particularly noticeable on the bottom registers, with them becoming cleaner and easier to follow. This confirmed what I have said above about the JFET being the weak link and introducing non-linearity.
After a bit of fervent brain activity I realised why. Fortunately the existing design of the MC input stage, JFET/valve, was actually giving too much gain which is very rare for a valve stage, it's usual to be struggling to get 'enough'.
I've now been able to use the excess gain to linearise the JFET to great effect, giving a standalone MC that equals the use of an external SUT or headamp.
It's so satisfying to come up with a new solution, I'm chuffed to bits.
I love Hendrix for so many reasons. He was so much more than just a blues guitarist - he played damn well any kind of guitar he wanted. In fact I'm not sure if he even played the guitar - he played music. - Stevie Ray Vaughan