SWAP: Lounge Audio LCR III MM phono stage

[gerlando]

Hello there,

I have a Lounge Audio LCR III MM phono stage in very good condition, original box and power supply.

Bought from Firebottle here a few weeks ago.

I would like to swap it with a Rega Fono MC or similar MC phono stage.

review here:

https://6moons.com/audioreviews2/lounge/1.html

https://www.tnt-audio.com/ampli/lounge_phono_preamps_e.html

Value of the item is about £150.

PM me if interested.

Kind regards.
Mauro

https://i.imgur.com/lzhFOAL.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/cvM9RjO.jpg

[Firebottle]

I'd just like to add that this stage has been modified by myself to improve its performance.

It's now a cracking stage for money quoted; GLWS (Good luck with swap)

[Pigmy Pony]

Damn, that's bad timing. Whoever gets this should know that I'll be stalking them in the hope that they one day put it up for sale :D

[gerlando]

Sold.

Many thanks to John.

[bbbiker800]

That's interesting Alan, can I ask what we're the changes?

Regards Richard

[Firebottle]

There were a few aspects of the original design that frankly weren't that good.
The LCR network (the heart of an LCR phono stage) was fed by a very small value coupling capacitor, so to compensate for the bass loss caused by this the first stage had a large bass boost. What is wanted is flat gain to avoid hum and noise problems.
I removed the boost and fitted large value coupling caps into the LCR network.

The chokes used for the L part, specifically the large value one, were not accurate so the CR values were adjusted to give a much flatter response.

The op-amp outputs had current sinks to supposedly put the op-amps into class A operation, these were unnecessary and in fact were causing distortion so they were removed.