Fidelity Research FR-64x

Stainless steel is very heavy. Magnesium, Titanium, aluminum are all much better. 

Why are you guys guys interested in these super high mass tonearms? 

Magnesium is the best. SME is the best. That's pretty much that. 

IMO, silver is actually better when it comes to tonearm wire because of the low fragile cartridge signal. Tonearms with silver wire sound significantly more alive, dynamic, and louder, but without sounding bright. My favorite wire to use is actually van den Hul MCS150M. Great stuff.

Anyone paying $1000-$2000 for an FR64 variant, should really stop and think about what they're doing. For that price one can get a brand new SME 309 or a used SME V. 

Old heavy clunker. Same goes for the Lustre. People should let these things die. 

@chakster B1 is a buffer, not passive, right? Passive preamps sound horrible.

Japanese have always used Stevenson or Stevenson like alignments. They are the worst. Both Lofgren A and B are significantly better in distortion and real world sound. Raul is right. 

Nelson knows his stuff, I'm not questioning the legitimacy of a buffer. But no way is a buffer better than an active linestage. And believe me, he knows this very well. Buffers are good for amateurs as they are simple to make and don't mess things up too much.

But that Lightspeed passive is nonsense. Putting a volume pot between your source and amp is so mind boggling stupid that I don't even know where to begin to explain why. 

It’s not a passive preamp. It’s a buffer. Passive preamps are horrendous. They have massive distortion and completely bastardize the original signal. They are complete and utter nonsense. Connecting source directly to amp will sound horrendous. In all honesty, you should really get a real preamplifier as buffers only are not the best either.

There’s nothing transparent about passive preamps as the potentiometer will have a significant impact on sound. And most of these potentiometers are worthless garbage. Especially today. Good stuff is no longer made and eBay pots are all 100% fake Chinese trash.

Passive preamps are made by people who know 0% about electronics and how circuits work.

Voltage amp current amp who cares? And none of this has anything to do with gain. I don't need answers from the manufacturer or that thread, I haven't lost my mind yet.

Feeding a signal from source to amp through a volume control pot will massively attenuate and distort it. You'll have a major impedance problem. Source output will be bastardized in different manner depending where the volume is set. Things such as cables will have a tremendous negative impact.

Dynamic range will take a crap. There will be no sense of drive. A $10 receiver from the thrift store will sound better. 

@chakster You go ahead and enjoy it! I'll just sit back and lol.

@chakster When it comes to passive preamps, there is an absolute, they’re laughably bad! Think it through, it’s a simple Ohm’s law. You want low source output impedance (<200R) and high amp input impedance (>10K). So what happens when you put a 10K, 50K, 100K pot in between? Hint, 10K pot will wreak less havoc than 100K pot. And unless the 10K pot is completely open, it will create progressively a bigger impedance mismatch as it’s turned down. It’s a nightmare scenario.

On top of that, even minor capacitance in the pF region in cables, parasitic, etc. will significantly attenuate high frequencies.

And further, the pot will dominate the sound/noise quality. Wiper pots are very noisy.

And your current induced noise will go up drastically. Using this between a phono preamp and amp is beyond dumb.

With a passive preamp, you’re taking a high quality source component and a high quality amp and turning them both to complete garbage.

Universal solution is a competent active preamplifier.

@chakster Nelson doesn't sell passive preamps nor makes them. He only sells active preamps. B1 buffer was meant for DIY amateurs.

People who actually design circuits laugh at passive preamps. If this is something you want to use, go ahead. But you are seriously ruining any resemblance of good sound. And I honestly cannot take your opinion seriously on anything else.