Phono stages a standard moving magnetic cartridge puts out about 5mV, a good Moving Coil cartridge just 400uV (0.4mV).  This needs to be amplified and equalised before feeding the line input of an amplifier.  Some amplifiers and preamplifiers have phono inputs, but not all, and they vary dramatically in quality.  Here we present phono stages that we have tried and liked.  Our MD Dave Cawley has tested each unit, and listened very, very hard. 


 

Timestep T-01MC £1,250.00

The T-01MC moving coil phonostage has been designed to work with every moving coil cartridge from a DL-103 to a Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement. We know that because we have tried them all and many, many others. The design comes from Dave Cawley who designed and built his first MC phonostage in 1981 and recently manufactured the award wining A.N.T. Kora phonostage. Dave also had a £9.5K phonostage re-engineered and used it as a reference, the results were amazing and somewhat surprising.

Building on his experience Dave has now produced a dual-mono phonostage with not a single integrated circuit or transistor in sight! No less than 16 FET's are used including a FET discrete power supply. The input FET's are laboriously hand tested and categorised before being inserted in blocks of 8 into the PCB.

The dual mono design is very evident just from looking at the PCB, indeed with a small saw you could make it completely mono, although we don't recommend this! Great attention to detail was applied both in the design and later in listening tests. The very expensive Dale input matching resistor coupled with the PTFE input sockets were probably the most influential, followed by the Wima polypropylene RIAA capacitors.

The biggest sound improvement is by using only FET's and no overall negative feedback. The T-01MC has been directly A-B compared with several phonostages costing up to £9,500. How did it sound? as good but with less hum! How could this be we hear you ask? Well the circuit and components are very similar, but we don't put it into a huge, two-box enclosure weighing 30kg. Instead we use a simple but well made case and a very, very expensive hum-free transformer.
Truly a case of less is more!

• Input : 4 x 2 hand matched parallel J FET's
• Input match : Dale CMF55 0.1% 100R, any value to order
• Input & output sockets : gold plated PTFE dielectric
• Total : 16 FET's
• Class : A
• Capacitors in signal path : Wima polypropylene and Starget or Panasonic FM
• Overall negative feedback : none
• Power supply : discrete FET regulators
• Transformer : 200% oversize cored toroidal, custom wound, inter-winding screen, silicon-steel magnetic band screen and additional screening can
• Power supply capacitors : Panasonic FC
• Shottkey diodes : x 4 Vishay
• PNP - NPN transistors : none
• Op-amps : none
• Integrated circuits : none
• Integrated regulators : none

  Click here to see more

  Click here to read the Hi Fi World review ?

  Click here to read the Hi-Fi Choice review ?

Click here to read the HiFi+ review

Click here to read the HiFi Pig Black Magic review


 

Whest  PS.30RDT Special Edition £4,700.00

Developed on the same design platform as the flagship model MC REF V MK4, the fully discrete Class-A PS.30RDT Special Edition is now the premier in the 30 Series in the Whest Audio range.

The soul of the PS.30RDT Special Edition comes from a fully discrete bipolar Class-A input stage which is very much related to the MC REF V MK4 discrete input stage. This Class-A input stage is now partnered with an audiophile ‘trimmed’ version of the same Class-A output stage used in the MC REF V MK4 which renders the new PS.30RDT Special Edition thee ‘tour-de-force’ in the high-end marketplace of phonostages – below the MC REF V Mk4 of course!

• Model No.: PS.30R  SE
• Discrete Class-A throughout
• 2 ultra low mechanical noise power transformers
• Ultra low impurity copper used throughout
• Hand selected and matched parts
• Single box solution for MM and MC cartridges
• Internal PCB suspension for reduced mechanical noise
• Designed on the MC REF V Mk4 platform
• 6 gain and 6 load settings
 

Whest  PS.30RDT £2,795.00

The PS.30RDT has become the phono stage which other stages are compared against. The PS.30RDT is not only a higher specified and closer tolerance version of the PS.30R but is electrically dual mono in design from the power inlet onwards! Every magazine that has reviewed the PS.30RDT has loved it, comparing it to the best of valve/tubes but without the pitfalls, namely: noise, microphony, bloated bass and image blur. They have also compared it to many stages costing many times its price and the PS.30RDT has always come out on top. The PS.30RDT is used in more than 30 archiving libraries worldwide due to its amazing resolving power. It is also used in several magazine reviewer systems worldwide and is now a Whest Audio best seller.

Whest  PS.30R £1,795.00

This very large and very impressive Phono Stage is without doubt one of the very best in the World.  It  is a joy to behold, visually and aurally!

Model No.: PS.30R
• RIAA curve accuracy: 18Hz - 22Khz +/- 0.2dB
• Frequency response: 5Hz - 65Khz -10dB /- 1.0dB
• Working band: 15Hz - 85Khz
• THD+N: 0.006%
• MM Gain 40dB
• MC gain 50dB-72dB internally adjustable 6 steps.
• Connections: Silver Unbalanced RCA, Neutrik XLR impedance balanced
• Connectors: Silver Audiophile
• Unpacked weight: 4.5Kgs
• Packed weight: 6Kgs
• Dimensions: W 430mm   D 290mm   H 78mm
• Operating voltage: 230VAC 50Hz or 115VAC 60Hz


 

 

 

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Sound Hi Fi

PO Box 2001  Dartmouth Devon  TQ6 9QN  Great Britain

Telephone 01803 833366  Fax 01803 839498  e-mail sales@SoundHiFi.com