A new turntable cartridge or a phono pre amp?

GedF

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I have around £250-300 for an upgrade to my set up:

Project Classic TT with Ortofon 2M Silver
Yamaha RN602
Tannoy Precision 6.1

My original thinking was to replace the Silver with a 2M Bronze but I am now wondering whether adding a Phono Pre Amp (Rega Fono MM Mk3) would give better results?

Any thoughts on what would give me most 'bang for my buck' in terms of sound improvement.

Tanks
 
I am not into my vinyl setup as much as some on here so I will await an answer and read with interest. :thumbsup:
 
I definitely recommend going for a separate phono stage and skipping the integrated phono amp in your receiver. Also, I've been looking for a volunteer for this to see if I'm crazy or not. If you're interested, and it turns out you don't like it, I'll cover some/all of the cost. I'd recommend buying the preamp mentioned in the thread and the Art DJ II. By itself it kinda sucks but it shines with the preamp. Then you could save the rest of your money for a good cart upgrade later on!

Let me know,
 
I have around £250-300 for an upgrade to my set up:

Project Classic TT with Ortofon 2M Silver
Yamaha RN602
Tannoy Precision 6.1

My original thinking was to replace the Silver with a 2M Bronze but I am now wondering whether adding a Phono Pre Amp (Rega Fono MM Mk3) would give better results?

Any thoughts on what would give me most 'bang for my buck' in terms of sound improvement.

Tanks
I can't say anything about a phono pre-amp upgrade, because I have no idea what the one in the Yamaha RN602 is like. But, while some integrated amps have poor to mediocre phono stages, some are excellent - and it's definitely a mistake to assume all standalone ones are better than all integrated ones. Hopefully someone who knows the Yamaha RN602 will be able to give you some idea of how it compares to the Rega Fono.

On the cartridge front, I got a big improvement upgrading from an elliptical stylus to a fine line one (though in my case it was Ortofon OM10 to OM30). That's sticking with the integrated phono stage in my Audiolab 8000A.
 
I have recently moved from an ortofon 2m blue to a nagaoka mp110, on a project debut turntable. I much prefer the new sound. To my ears it sounds more "turntably".
 
@GedF

Morning - I had the RN602 until earlier this year.
I hadn't played records for years and thus the phono stage was fine until I noticed that a number of albums that I had on both vinyl and CD, the vinyl sounded quieter than the CD and "lesser".
I added the Rega Fono MM Mk3 and the improvement was massive.
It's the best cash for sound upgrade I've made.

I then suffered a bout of upgrade-itis, not huge in terms of cost to what some people spend on here but tbh I reckoned if I had stuck with the RN602 I still would've been happy with it.

Go for it, you can get the Fono on Amazon so if you feel its still not doing it for you its an easy cash free return....
 
I have around £250-300 for an upgrade to my set up:

Project Classic TT with Ortofon 2M Silver
Yamaha RN602
Tannoy Precision 6.1

My original thinking was to replace the Silver with a 2M Bronze but I am now wondering whether adding a Phono Pre Amp (Rega Fono MM Mk3) would give better results?

Any thoughts on what would give me most 'bang for my buck' in terms of sound improvement.

Tanks

I have been looking into TT pre’s and the best bang for your money, imo, seems to be the Musial Fidelity MX VNYL. It is twice your budget but looks like the one I will go for when I recover financially from my recent pre amp upgrade. I did look at the Rega mk3 which is within budget but seems to get hit and miss feedback. However, Ascotbilly has recommended this one so it should be good. Unfortunately everything is money and deciding where to draw the line is down to you. My gut tells me pre amp first then cart if needed as a future upgrade. Cheers.
 
Just pulled the trigger on the Musical Fidelity MX VYNL as I managed to get new one for £594 delivered. Deals are around to be had. I will let you know my thoughts when it arrives. Cheers.
 
Just pulled the trigger on the Musical Fidelity MX VYNL as I managed to get new one for £594 delivered. Deals are around to be had. I will let you know my thoughts when it arrives. Cheers.

Would be really interested to hear your thoughts, am considering that or an Era Gold V now I've upgraded my cartridge to a MP110.
 
Thanks for all your comments.I am certainly edging towards the Fono MK3 as the next upgrade. One slight concern is whether this pre amp is more geared towards Rega TTs and would the 'synergy' of a Project phono box be a better option with the Classic? Or am I over thinking things??!!
 
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Thanks for all your comments.I am certainly edging towards the Fono MK3 as the next upgrade. One slight concern is whether this pre amp is more geared towards Rega TTs and would the 'synergy' of a Phono box be a better option with the Classic? Or am I over thinking things??!!
From what I have read it should be fine for all MM turntables but won’t do MC hence why I have gone for the MX for future proofing just in case I want to try MC. Cheers.
 
@GedF

Morning - I had the RN602 until earlier this year.
I hadn't played records for years and thus the phono stage was fine until I noticed that a number of albums that I had on both vinyl and CD, the vinyl sounded quieter than the CD and "lesser".
I added the Rega Fono MM Mk3 and the improvement was massive.
It's the best cash for sound upgrade I've made.

I then suffered a bout of upgrade-itis, not huge in terms of cost to what some people spend on here but tbh I reckoned if I had stuck with the RN602 I still would've been happy with it.

Go for it, you can get the Fono on Amazon so if you feel its still not doing it for you its an easy cash free return....
I've found the same with the phono stage of my RX-A3080 so went with an external phono stage.

The lack of volume seems to be a Yamaha thing because all my previous Yamaha amps/recievers have had the same problem.
 
Update: Musical Fidelity MX-VYNL arrived and has been setup to my ears.

343DB6DD-6A08-49D2-ACDF-96BB1BEE3F78.jpeg


I would state that the quality and detail of music being played back is an improvement over my integrated phono stage. Not SACD quality but close. Nice treble, mids and bass. I am hearing detail that I have not noticed before. On the whole I am pleased with my purchase. The only negative is to do with the 12v PSU which ships with it. It is crap. You need to have it away from your TT otherwise you will hear SWMPS noise being picked up by the Cartridge circuit. I resolved the issue by cutting a lead off an old Nokia phone charger and am now running the Pre with a 12v battery.

E6CF88AB-1D42-4D26-80CC-C714308DFFD2.jpeg


No noise and an awful lot cheaper than buying a quality Linear PSU for it. I hope my feedback has proved useful. Cheers.
 
Hi, hope nobody minds me resurrecting this thread but I was looking for assistance with my MX-VYNL phono stage and this this thread popped up. I know next to nothing about loading and gain etc so was looking for advice on settings for my Ortofon Quintet Black S, which is an MC cartridge mounted on a Rega P6.
The specifications in the doc for the Ortofon cartridge say the following about the load

Recommended load impedance

Here is the full link to the Ortofon docs specifications.

Because of my lack of knowledge that seems quite vague to just say > than 20 Ohm but not put a limit on it - eg, < 150 Ohm. The Loading selector wheel on the MX_VYNL actually goes up as far as 800 Ohm so it seems quite a jump from 20 to 800 Ohm.

In the MX-VYNL doc it has the following info about Gain. There are two settings, either 0db or +6db. What do these settings actually do and what should I be looking out for?

Gain selector. Use to select desired gain to match output to other sources in use in system

Sensitivity for 300mV nom.

Switch setting MM MC

0 db 5mV 0.8mV
+6db 2.5mV 0.4mV

Here is the full doc for MX-VYNL


On my MX-VYNL I have set the EQ to IEC and the Gain to +6db, and the Load is 50 Ohm.
It sounds pretty good but perhaps sometimes a little boomy in the bass depending what I'm listening to so any advice on how to improve or tinker with setings appreciated. Thanks.
 
Hi, hope nobody minds me resurrecting this thread but I was looking for assistance with my MX-VYNL phono stage and this this thread popped up. I know next to nothing about loading and gain etc so was looking for advice on settings for my Ortofon Quintet Black S, which is an MC cartridge mounted on a Rega P6.
The specifications in the doc for the Ortofon cartridge say the following about the load

Recommended load impedance


Here is the full link to the Ortofon docs specifications.

Because of my lack of knowledge that seems quite vague to just say > than 20 Ohm but not put a limit on it - eg, < 150 Ohm. The Loading selector wheel on the MX_VYNL actually goes up as far as 800 Ohm so it seems quite a jump from 20 to 800 Ohm.

In the MX-VYNL doc it has the following info about Gain. There are two settings, either 0db or +6db. What do these settings actually do and what should I be looking out for?

Gain selector. Use to select desired gain to match output to other sources in use in system

Sensitivity for 300mV nom.

Switch setting MM MC

0 db 5mV 0.8mV
+6db 2.5mV 0.4mV

Here is the full doc for MX-VYNL


On my MX-VYNL I have set the EQ to IEC and the Gain to +6db, and the Load is 50 Ohm.
It sounds pretty good but perhaps sometimes a little boomy in the bass depending what I'm listening to so any advice on how to improve or tinker with setings appreciated. Thanks.
You definitely want to set EQ to RIAA unless you’re playing old records that you know were mastered with a different EQ and I’d experiment with higher resistance, maybe 100-200. 100 is usually about right for modern Ortofon MCs. It may be very subtle/not noticeable. Too high resistance will emphasise the higher frequencies.
 
You definitely want to set EQ to RIAA unless you’re playing old records that you know were mastered with a different EQ and I’d experiment with higher resistance, maybe 100-200. 100 is usually about right for modern Ortofon MCs. It may be very subtle/not noticeable. Too high resistance will emphasise the higher frequencies.
Thanks for suggestions. I'll give it a go!
 

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