Phono preamps

Thanks so much to all of you. I'm making a move on the Bellari. I'm still open to opinions if that one falls through.

russ

Bellari fell through; I was too late; still open to advice/suggestions/offers/etc.

the rustler

Hi All,

I just called and spoke with a technician at Rolls/Bellari. He said that their phono preamp "cannot work with moving coil cartridges." (!) What am I to make of this, given that some report using them with good results?

rustler

The Bellari does not provide enough gain for low output moving coils. I believe it has only 30 db gain (which may possibly be increased by tube rolling) and it may not have enough for high output moving coils putting out 2-2.5 mv. Do some research at the Vinyl Asylum at Audioasylum with respect to how much gain you are going to require which is dependent on how much output the cartridge has. If you have a phono stage with adjustable gain, that will give you flexibility with respect to a range of cartridges that will be compatible. No such adjustable gain and you'll require careful matching of the cartridge to the stage. If you don't have adjustable gain, you are, in effect, going to be restricted to cartridges having a certain output that will match up well with whatever stage you buy. There are other more complicated solutions (step-up transformers, etc.) but at this stage I'd suggest you do your homework on the above. Vinyl is not simple, but it is worth the effort; you're going to have to learn a bit to function in the vinyl world.