Originally Posted by
YNWaN
I was at the Yorkshire Hi-Fi Club do yesterday and heard your stage Oliver. The situation was much as you describe but specifically:
Dave had two cartridges, an optical design that requires a custom stage to power it and decode the optical signal and a high output MC. Obviously the optical design couldn’t be used. Briefly the high output was used but it was immediately obvious that this was overloading and distortion was obvious. Another member had brought a recently rebuilt Ortofon and this was pre-aligned in his own SME style head shell. The deck in question had a 12” Jelco arm on it and the head shells were swapped and the tracking reset to 1.8g. After a couple of tracks I asked Dave (Brooks) if he could raise the arm height as it was obvious the cartridge was very down at the back - he made the required adjustment (I think even a bit more could have been done but he was running out of arm pillar adjustment) and the sound was more open - clearly better. The chap who had brought the phonostage (your design) said be normally ran a Benz (wood I think) and liked it with no additional loading so that is how it was run initially. To be honest, I didn’t find the sound at all ‘forward’ and I am surprised you have been told so. In fact I found it overly relaxed and rather dynamically flat :(. We then tried adjusting the loading with some plugs the owner had brought - this made next to no diffference to me. I’m sorry, but in this case the cumulative sound left me entirely unengaged. However, what the cause of this was is very difficult to say. It could have been the cartridge, the setup of the arm/cartridge (very easily), your stage, compatibility issues (though it seemed to work fine in a technical sense with the amplification) etc.