sirspeedy70680@ & Rauliruegas - Yes I agree that the audiophile merry-go-round process of buying and trying equipment, can be tedious and costly. The assistance and expertise of seasoned hobbyists like yourselves can help relatively newcomers like me to be more efficient as we search. In the end when the latest and greated piece of equipment is introduced into our system, it is our own evaluation of its performance that dictates whether it stays or goes.
I also agree with the importance you place on the phonostage. I hesitated when deciding on the title of this thread, trying to decide whether or not to include it. I am aware that the performance potential of my cartridges surpass those of my arms, tt or phonostage. I purposefully left out the phonostage in the title so that I can focus on the tt and arm with the intent on searching the archives for highly recommended phonostages. Admittedly my current analog setup, despite being made up of quality gear is, in the grand scheme of things, midfi and no where near reference level. As you can see from one of my previous posts my search for a phonostage has already been fairly extensive. I am lucky that I did not have to pay for the chance to listen to many of these units as they were brought over by local audio club members. The ones that came with a price tag were acquired with the option to return the unit if it did not work out in my system.
Rauliruegas - It can also be concluded from my previous post, that I prefer the sound of a tube phonostage. I have heard one old and one new generation Rowland in my system and along with my Threshold FET10HL, Groove and more recently, my Whest and ASR Basis Exclusive experiences, none of them did for me what the top performing tube-based gear has done. I will look forward to an in-my-system chance of evaluating an Ayre, FM Acoustics, Connoisseur, Boulder, etc. and see if they can reach out and grab me. Unfortunately, the latter three are simply too costly.
So as tempting as it is to want to qualify my statement about output coupling capacitors relative to your stance on the merits of DC coupled designs, I will bow out for many reasons, the most important among them are: 1) I am not an engineer so am in no position to prefer one design over another based on technical/theoretical knowledge, 2) it has the potential to lead to a ss vs. tube discussions, which is a non-issue for me as I am open to trying all types of phonostages, and 3) the design (whether right or wrong) of an audio gear is of less importance to me than how it ultimately performs/sounds in my system.
What does this all mean? I have to face the possibility that if I cannot find a tube unit to work with the MC2, then I may have to settle on the need to have two phonostages. I also realize that this can occur before or after deciding on a tonearm to ideally mate with my cartridges on a quality tt. So it is possible that I will have to settle for a solid state unit (DC coupled or otherwise) for the MC2 and whatever tube phonostage I end up liking for the other MC cartridges with higher outputs.
I look forward to receiving your TP comments offline. Feel free to recommend either here or offline your top choices of DC coupled phonostages in the $4-7k range. Also curious if you and your colleague(s) manufacture your custom full function preamp? If so what is the cost to have one made? If you do manufacture it, do you have adequate inventory of these units available for someone like me to try?
