A LETTER TO A WOODY SPU TONEARM OWNER ON PETE'S PHONO STAGE EXPERIENCE
Hi David,
It is good to hear that things are working well with your Woody SPU Tonearm. In answer to your questions about my experiences with phono stages:
For a while I was playing a Jolida JD9 phono stage with op amp gain and equalization and a tube buffer. I upgraded this several times. It was a bit lackluster.
Then I purchased a combined tape stage phono stage built by Kara Chaffee of de Haviland Electric Amplifier Company. This used op-amp gain for the first 20 dB of gain and tube gain for the final 40 dB. The phono stage for this was a one-off thing added to the tape stage as a favor by Kara. This was a bit lean sounding. Then a customer graciously bought for me, gratis, a very fancy multiple input phono stage built by Musical Fidelity. This was a masterpiece of convenience, and sounded pretty good, but was plagued by a bit more hum than I found acceptable. At the time this was priced somewhere around $3000, too much for a gift I could not use. So, I had the giver of the gift arrange for it to be returned to Music Direct, the seller, and be refunded his purchase price.
All this time I had a George Wright WP100 all tube phono stage with 40 dB of gain and an input impedance of 47 kOhms. I finally dusted off the George Wright unit and coupled it with a pair of RCA MI12399 microphone transformers with a 14:1 turns ratio (23 dB of gain, 196 x reduction of impedance). I read-up on the recommended load impedance for my SPU Classic G Mk.II cartridge. The recommended impedance was 10 Ohms or greater. I dug around in my carbon comp resistor collection and found a couple of 5300 Ohm resistors. 5300 Ohms divided by 196 is equal to 27 Ohm load on the SPU cartridge. When I played this, I was blown away. I had no idea how "right" an SPU could sound, how musical, how lovely on the top end, and how dynamic. For the foreseeable future, maybe for the duration, this will be my phono setup. I think the carbon comp resistors are part of this magic.
The RCA transformers are mounted in a beautiful little crinkle finish black box I bought on ebay. I can't remember the name of the seller (a really good guy), but he sells a lot of these boxes for various transformers. If you don't see one for the transformers you choose, email him.
David, I hope you find these thoughts of value. Thank you for the kind words you have said about the Woody SPU tonearm and my Woody Interchangeable SME style headshells.
Kind Regards,
Pete
It is good to hear that things are working well with your Woody SPU Tonearm. In answer to your questions about my experiences with phono stages:
For a while I was playing a Jolida JD9 phono stage with op amp gain and equalization and a tube buffer. I upgraded this several times. It was a bit lackluster.
Then I purchased a combined tape stage phono stage built by Kara Chaffee of de Haviland Electric Amplifier Company. This used op-amp gain for the first 20 dB of gain and tube gain for the final 40 dB. The phono stage for this was a one-off thing added to the tape stage as a favor by Kara. This was a bit lean sounding. Then a customer graciously bought for me, gratis, a very fancy multiple input phono stage built by Musical Fidelity. This was a masterpiece of convenience, and sounded pretty good, but was plagued by a bit more hum than I found acceptable. At the time this was priced somewhere around $3000, too much for a gift I could not use. So, I had the giver of the gift arrange for it to be returned to Music Direct, the seller, and be refunded his purchase price.
All this time I had a George Wright WP100 all tube phono stage with 40 dB of gain and an input impedance of 47 kOhms. I finally dusted off the George Wright unit and coupled it with a pair of RCA MI12399 microphone transformers with a 14:1 turns ratio (23 dB of gain, 196 x reduction of impedance). I read-up on the recommended load impedance for my SPU Classic G Mk.II cartridge. The recommended impedance was 10 Ohms or greater. I dug around in my carbon comp resistor collection and found a couple of 5300 Ohm resistors. 5300 Ohms divided by 196 is equal to 27 Ohm load on the SPU cartridge. When I played this, I was blown away. I had no idea how "right" an SPU could sound, how musical, how lovely on the top end, and how dynamic. For the foreseeable future, maybe for the duration, this will be my phono setup. I think the carbon comp resistors are part of this magic.
The RCA transformers are mounted in a beautiful little crinkle finish black box I bought on ebay. I can't remember the name of the seller (a really good guy), but he sells a lot of these boxes for various transformers. If you don't see one for the transformers you choose, email him.
David, I hope you find these thoughts of value. Thank you for the kind words you have said about the Woody SPU tonearm and my Woody Interchangeable SME style headshells.
Kind Regards,
Pete