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Jolida JD9: I think I over-bought. Alternatives?

In my infinite quest of attaining gear that punches above it's weight class.... I landed a used JD9 to try it out and I'm frustrated. The AT120ET cart is too high of output to use the high outputs (even with 12au7 tubes). I ended up using the low outputs. While it still sounds good, I can't help but think that I'm not getting as much out of it with the cart i'm using. ...and I don't want to upgrade my cart.

I think I might go back to the Cambridge 651p or Musical Fidelity V90-LPS. Both sounded pretty good. I post here, so you guys can talk me out of it ... or suggest an alternative. On the plus side, I did score some 12ax7 mullards, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

I have a stock technics 1200 Mk2 that I'm quite happy with. Just need a preamp that matches nicely with the cart. I think there might be something in-between the $200 - $600 that might be a good match.

Conversely both the Cambridge and MF are pretty good. I'm not looking for a critical preamp. Thoughts?
martinman
martinman's avatar
martinman OP
43 posts
 
Hi Everyone,

I took Jedinite24 and Gadfly's advice and bought a Bugle 2 Kit from Jim Hagerman.

http://www.hagtech.com/bugle2.html

I am absolutely blown away by it's performance. It's exactly what I was look for. We all love products where the price to performance ratio is maximized. You can't beat this at $139 kit / $189 assembled. The bugle 2 is far better than anything you can get at this price-point.

If you are handy at all, get the kit -- the directions are very very good.
hiho
451 posts
 

Glad you like your new phono preamp. But it's curious that if you're technical enough to assemble a kit and yet you couldn't bypass the tube stage to lower the gain, just jumping couple wires, which would have cost you nothing. Essentially you're replacing one op-amp for another. Oh well, you're getting what you want so that's what matters.

_______
martinman's avatar
martinman OP
43 posts
 
Hiho -

Yep, I hear you. I thought about it, but didn't want to mod it (even it wasn't permanent). I bought the jolida to get that warm tube sound. Bypassing it would have removed the primary deciding factor of me buying it to begin with. Well, that and I didn't want alot of $$$ tied up in a pre that I wasn't getting full use out of.

I really appreciate you help on this. I wish I could read schematics as good as you!! Would make my life alot easier!
wolf_garcia
4,650 posts
 
I enjoy a Cambridge 640p with the now seemingly unavailable Pangea P100 power supply...so...uh...nevermind. I bet the new version sounds great, although again, likely too inexpensive for the true audio geek.
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