Arkless Phono stage

[YNWaN]

I would rather hear it than hear about it...

[Arkless Electronics]

The demo unit should be sorted by the time Si gets here so yes I'll be interested to hear what you both make of it. This is not intended to be a rival to the Paradise BTW... just to take on the £800 - £2000 range with a vengeance and hopefully beat the likes of the Uphorik and Superline!
My answer to the Paradise is WIP.... Watch this space as they say. Transimpedance amplification with zero feedback does indeed look interesting. Both simulation and brief breadboarding of practical circuitry is leading me to believe that I may be able to offer a rival to the Paradise that doesn't need a thousand transistors in order to be able to match them well enough. Early days so far though....

[YNWaN]

Yep, I quite understand - I don't see it as a competition - just very interesting.

[Marco]

The demo unit should be sorted by the time Si gets here so yes I'll be interested to hear what you both make of it. This is not intended to be a rival to the Paradise BTW... just to take on the £800 - £2000 range with a vengeance and hopefully beat the likes of the Uphorik and Superline!

Don't forget at some point to give me a listen, if you can knock-up a MM-only version (no point in having any unneccessary 'gubbins' in there when I'd be using it with an Ortofon SUT), and I'll compare it with the heavily-modified, point-to-point wired (PCB-free) valve MM phono stage inside my Croft.

In that respect, it would be interesting to hear how your phono stage stands up to comparison against some quality glowing bottles, amongst all this uber-tweaked, fancy-pants 'sandboy' malarkey!!

Marco.

[YNWaN]

Why not just run your cart directly in to it and not use the SUT in this case?

[Marco]

I could do, but gain-wise, it would likely be less than ideal, as the SPU has a very low output (0.2mV), unless Jez's phono stage has a high gain option. However, more importantly, the SPU has been 'voiced' to match my SUT, so I'm trying to minimise the variables.

Should there be a marked difference in the sound of the Arkless phono stage, compared with the one in my Croft, I'd like to know what's responsible for it, and if I'm simply comparing one MM stage against another (albeit it valve vs. SS), it makes that job much easier

Marco.

[YNWaN]

Fair enough. However, gain shouldn't be an issue - my own cart outputs the same as yours and I haven't encountered any gain problems.

[Marco]

Yup, no doubt that could be worked around. My Ortofon SUT provides a gain of 27dB at 1kHz, all of which is needed with my Croft MM phono stage - any less than that, and dynamic impact suffers.

Interestingly, when I'm at Martin T's place, and bring my Techy down for a sesh, he always ups the gain to maximum on his Whest PS 30R, for use with my SPU, which is a higher setting than he normally uses with his Shelter 5000 cartridge - and the SPU sounds much better on the higher gain setting.

Out of interest, how much gain does your own MC stage provide?

In any case, in terms of this comparison and in the interests of achieving the most meaningful results, I'd prefer simply to compare one MM stage with another.

Marco.

[Arkless Electronics]

I'll likely put a switch for MM/MC on the demo one just to make it easier for people to try it with either type although I don't envisage many wanting a MM version....
I would certainly prefer it to be auditioned without a SUT as I'm no fan of them personally. My phono stages are not designed to have any sound or "voicing" of their own but to be an open and transparent window to the source (some sort of mixed metaphor there!)

[YNWaN]

Out of interest, how much gain does your own MC stage provide?

I believe it is 64dB - quite healthy.