Ideal TT & Arm for the following top cartridges...

Nsgarch and all - In my prevous post aboout the Tri-Planar and the Graham, I mistakenly referred to the Graham when I really meant the Brinkman tt, arm & cartridge. So this brings me to...

sirspeedy70680@'s comments - A few of our audio club members recently got together for a phono stage shootout. We began this task by deciding which tt/arm/cart we want to use. We preferred the Graham Phantom with a Shelter 90x vs. the all Brinkman setup, which was more analytical and not as involving. I forget the tt used with Phantom and 90x for now and will provide this info when I recall or when one of the shootout attendees either email me or chime in.

Surely this was not an apples to apples comparison, but it certainly gave me a taste of the Brinkman sound.

Thanks for your continued suggestions and follow-up.

With repect to my previous post, I just remembered (one of the great benefits of getting some sleep) that the Phatom/90x was mounted as a second arm on the Brinkman tt. Also as an FYI, the rest of the equipment used for the phono stage shootout were all current production versions and includes the Avalon Opus Ceramiques, Air Tight pre and Rowland amps.

BTW--Though I'm not sure this was mentioned,and it is probably widely known anyway,there is quite a chasm(love that word)between some of the cartridge weights,mentioned.This will definitely require careful arm consideration,regarding effective mass.There is quite a disparity between the Colibri and Koetsu you mention.They will most likely require different arms,unless you source one with different arm-tubes.Each with a different mass.BTW-In the price area you mentioned,the Oracle,and SME-10 are fine products with good field records.I hope my comments have not mirrored what may have already been stated,as I haven't read all posts.

Also,as for the seemingly negative Brinkman statements,all I can say is DRATS.I kinda liked them.I have never really heard the products,but to me they had a really magnificent appearance,regarding integrity of build,and design.This usually means fine performance,but I've already shown how little I actually know.Just read some of my older posts!

Dear Norm: +++++ " The above adventures have led me to the discovery of how sonically influencial are output coupling and other signal carrying capacitors. Boy was I floored when a capacitor change (at $18 to $35 each) impacted the sonic signature significantly more than an IC, PC and tube change. " +++++

We have to understand this kind of statement ( btw, about the TP I will let you know " alone " by e-mail, I don't want a heavy controversy here. Dan, well was almost a joke but how far we are on the 11 version when we almost are in the VIII one? )

Like the step up transformer: the best capacitor is NO capacitor at all.
If you compare a phonopreamp DC coupled against any cap/transformer coupled the quality differences is really great in favor of the DC coupled one.

The Allaerts MC2 Finish, that is a glorious quality performance cartridge, deserve not only a very good phonopreamp circuit design but a DC coupled unit with around 80 db of clean gain with out distortions/noise and with out SUT. The MC 2 is an around 7K dollars, please don't tell me that you will " leave " the whole cartridge performance in the " hands " of a " cheap " capacitor and transformers. Well you can do that but in that way you never/ever know which one is really the MC2 Finish quality and you never know why you do a 7K payment for that cartridge.

We can do an analogy: would you buy a Lamborghini Contact to use it in " your virtual home " that is located in the mid of the Sahara where there is no any serious ( German Vans ) roads? I think that you don't. Then why try to do the same with the MC2 Finish? or the Colibri or other top jewelery/cartridges.
With all my respect to you that does not makes sense to me: it makes sense to you?
Other example: just imagine a Soprano singing through a paper box instead to do it directly/in a natural way. It don't makes sense, no?.

Now, if I were in your position to buy those top cartridges/tonearms/TT before I take action about my very first step should be to have the phonopreamp that will be abble to do " justice " to those great " analog devices ". At the analog stage ( in the audio system ) the phonopreamp has a vital " work ", we can't do mistakes here. Of course many of us already take the wrong " road " and many times we take the wrong road because a misconception about the critical importance that has the phonopreamp. I think that sooner or later we have to give to the phonopreamp the vital " life " that represents for the correct quality music sound reproduction at home.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Ctm and Speedy, I have to second the Brinkmann LaGrange TT. Amazing unit. Besides being a work of art to look at, the details brought forth from those micro grooves in my LP's just make me and my friends shake our heads and smile. From the bass to the top end nothing that I have heard short of a Rockport III will beat it by any real margin. I think it might be a bargain considering what one would need to spend to match it, let alone beat it sound wise. I don't know if a LaGrange would fit your budget but if you could swing it, I doubt you would be looking for another TT any time soon, if ever.

I have tried the Brinkmann TT in my system with a Brinkmann arm. While this might be a great combo, it needs to run with the Brinkmann cart otherwise a mid level mismatch seems to occur. This means that if you like to experiment with different carts, the Brinkmann would not be the optimal arm. I found the Triplanar VII better suited my taste in the dynamics and tonal balance department when using my XV-1s or UNIverse.