Do you ship worldwide?
Yes. Units have now been shipped to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, EU countries, India, and many other places around the world. US, Canadian and Australian dollar prices include shipping costs, the same for Euro prices with shipping to the EU. For other countries, shipping costs are calculated at sale and added onto the base price, with payments accepted in US$, CA$, AU$, and € according to the customers choice.
Linear PSUs for standard mains voltages
So far, import duties have not been charged on orders to the USA and Australia, but other countries, such as those in the EU, may charge additional import fees to receive goods from the UK. If reductions are possible, the company is happy to fill out customs forms as instructed by the customer, provided that the customer takes full responsibility for the accuracy of the declaration as it applies to their country.
What's your returns policy?
Variable! For UK customers, returns are accepted within 14 days of delivery, for a refund minus the cost of postage and packaging as per the sales receipt. For overseas customers, returns are only automatically accepted for genuinely faulty units or if the units are damaged in transit. Returns for other reasons may be dealt with at the discretion of the company on a case-by-case basis, but the company does not make a rule of accepting no-fault returns due to the high cost of postage overseas.
Returns of faulty or damaged units by the customer may be charged the cost of repair and re-commissioning if the damage or fault is determined to be caused by misuse; for instance, power supply circuitry damage caused by use with a non-standard or inappropriate power adapter. Please note that the company does not accept returns of products that have been modified by the customer. The company reserves the right to decline further orders after a return has been made. Potential customers are advised to make certain they are ordering the product that best fits their needs before placing an order.
Is there a warranty on products?
Within reason, yes! All products are sold with a conditional 2 year warranty, to cover potential manufacturing defects and the possibility of failure when used as intended in accordance with the operating instructions. Unfortunately, after a series of consecutive abuses of the previous guarantee against failure due to a small minority of users connecting units rated for 9V AC to 24V AC Rega power supplies (with two units destroyed in a row in one case), it is now at the company's discretion to determine whether any potential fault is caused by misuse and revoke warranty in such cases.
Although advice is freely given, the company also cannot take responsibility for setup issues that can be inherent to some turntable setups, such as mains noise pickup from miswired turntables or excessive RFI generated by non EMC compliant devices in close proximity. While the company will ensure that all units sold are to a high standard of performance, it is up to the customer to make sure that their setup is free of issues before ordering, as the company is unable to assist in remedying setup problems originating from other devices due to time constraints. To prevent frustration on both ends of potential sales, customers may asked to briefly run through their intended setup to ensure the best chance of success before placing an order.
Spare parts and repairs?
It's possible! As of May 2024, no units have developed faults when operated as intended since September 2022 (missed solder joints - sent all the way to Australia of course!), and have therefore shown excellent reliability, considering the hundreds of devices in operation at the time of writing. Potential short-term failures are covered by conditional warranty, and while not yet seen, long-term failures are an inevitability given the sheer quantity of units in the field. The company therefore keeps a small stock of spares for both current production and legacy products to cover the eventuality of repair.
The company offers a repair service for units that have failed outside of their conditional warranty period, although any such units must be returned to company premises for repair, full re-commissioning and re-testing to the original specification at sale. Repairs by the company are not possible on units modified from their standard form at sale, refraining from direct participation in remote DIY or third party repairs.
Spartan 10 - now discontinued
The company keeps some external metal parts for legacy products, though some of these are end-of-run 'B-grade' parts that may offer improvement only in the case of significant cosmetic damage (if such damage is sought to be repaired). Spare metal parts are never sent out for re-fitting or modification due space limitations; they are retained for on-premises repair service only, with the exception of some small external parts (such as control knobs) on a case-by-case basis.
Although the company may decline involvement in some remote repairs, all schematics and parts lists of legacy/discontinued products are and will be made available on the products' website pages, so that any professional repair service will be able to fix failed units. 99% of parts found in the company's products are readily available from major component suppliers and online retailers, to guarantee future proofing and a number of repair options for the user. A quantity of power supplies are also retained for replacement in the event they are lost or destroyed.
Can products be customised?
All products must be sold as standard. A great deal of time has gone into optimising all of the products available on this website, and it is highly unlikely that modification of these products outside of their original specification will bring any positive effects. The company commits to continuous improvement of all products, but does not customise any products sold or send out parts from newer or different versions for updating standard earlier versions. Customers may of course use third parties or even their own technical prowess to modify the company's products, however please be aware that this will be outside of the conditional warranty terms and returns/repairs will not be possible.
Is there a PSU upgrade?
No. This question seems to appear perennially as a result of the dubious marketing strategies of other companies, seemingly designed to wring as much cash out of buyers, with little regard to evidence of benefit. Customers are happily informed that the 'standard wall-wart' supplies offered with all units are entirely optimised and there is no benefit to be obtained by using different, more expensive units. In fact, quite the opposite, as the company has yet to encounter a transformer-based power supply that offers as low an idle power consumption and capacitive isolation from the mains as the types presently supplied. This will be covered soon in greater detail...
Power supply warning shipped with all units
Supplied PSUs are linear types as standard, and while they are contained within 'wall-wart' enclosures, giving the initial impression of low-cost design choices, they are a world apart from the cheap switching PSUs that are unfortunately so often included with modern audio equipment. Swapping them out for other types is highly discouraged, as doing so can potentially overload the product's internal rails, cause the regulators to drop out, inject excess noise, or simply cause early failure. The company does not wish to waste its own, or its customer's time making sub-optimal products to dangle 'upgrade' carrots for quick cash. Customers are advised to spend their excess cash on records!
No variable cartridge loading?
Indeed, this rather tricky subject is soon to be covered in a series of articles on moving magnet and coil input circuitry, but it has been revealed through quite extensive research that variable loading is quite undesirable for 99% of applications, particularly those relating to MC cartridges. With these devices, variable loading inevitably deviates away from optimal absorption of radio frequency interference at the point of resonance with cartridge inductance, increases insertion loss, and can therefore degrade signal-to-noise ratio.
From discussions on Audio Science Review, in relation to moving magnet cartridge loading:
I don't think it's a good idea to include these, as they do confuse people a bit and can also be conflated with the total system capacitance, which would lead to poor results.
The small capacitor that yields most of the input capacitance of 120pF is 100pF, and must be connected after the RF stop resistor of 100Ω or so to prevent radio-frequency interference in the VHF band from getting onto the input where it would then be envelope-detected as audible hash. If it were to be routed through a switch, the extra inductance would make it a less effective shunt.
A lot of the preamplifiers advertised as 100pF are in fact 120pF or more, as you've got to factor in the PCB track-to-ground capacitance, op-amp input, and so on...
Adding more capacitance can be done quite easily, but adds complexity to the design and only really affects the response above 10kHz by a few dB at most. Most modern cartridges work best with about 200-300pF, so I don't really see a need for it if we have 120pF from the preamp and then another 80-150pF from the tone-arm and cabling. Adding it would just increase the size and complexity of the board, enclosure, generate long e-mail exchanges about setting it, give people the opportunity of setting too much of it and complaining etc.
Regarding minimum input capacitance in moving magnet input amplifiers:
While most audio op-amps such as the NJM2068 and NE5534 have excellent RFI handling in an audio setup, without audio-band detection below 20MHz or so, they can start detecting with horrifying efficacy once you get past 50MHz. This may be especially true in the GHz's where you have high levels of energy from WiFi and cell phones, which are easily induced via standing waves up into the shielded centre conductor of most audio cables.
To stop your phono preamp from becoming an incoming call/text message pre-notification device, you need at least 100pF (for a through-hole design, a bit less for SMT caps with lower series inductance) of shunt capacitance, behind a resistor of relatively low value to prevent excessive Johnson-noise contribution while absorbing VHF/UHF interference. If you leave this out of the in the interests of flexibility, the input is at the mercy of the environment and complaints will abound.
You could, of course, increase the value of the stopper resistor and decrease the load cap to a minimum of 47pF, but this just increases the effective input noise of the device. Having a fixed input capacitance also encourages the user to shorten their phono leads, which helps to minimise setup issues. A good cable is a short one, I say!
Regarding moving coil cartridge loading:
The same goes for MC loading, which doesn't even really affect the frequency response until it drops below the coil resistance. You need a low enough resistance value so as to let the resistor dissipate the resonance of the cartridge inductor against the load capacitance. The load resistor is typically selected for its highest value such that the appropriate resistance is about ten times the coil resistance to keep insertion loss under 1dB. If you design the input amplifier correctly, then the thermal noise of coil resistance will dominate if it increases beyond 30Ω, so the noise penalty from insertion loss is swamped by the noise of the higher coil resistance.
If you let the user select the MC load resistance value, then they'll either increase insertion loss and harm the signal-to-noise ratio of the device, or create an underdamped RF peak at the coil-inductance/load-capacitance resonance point that will be detected on the input and lead to complaints. Changing the loading alters the level at the input slightly, but perhaps enough for people to convince themselves they have a 'preferred' amount that will probably provoke trouble... Most preamps on the market use pretty brutal (and rather noisy) resistive series RF stopper networks on the input amplifier, preventing the resonance from getting through, at a massive noise penalty which is only acceptable because the market has such low expectations with the intuitive (but incorrect) explanation that the level is lower and therefore noise is correspondingly higher.
From the manufacturers perspective: easy to implement with little electronics knowledge - you just need to switch in the components that amount to whatever you want to write on the switch face. It adds perceived value for little effort/allows the manufacturer to claim it's necessary for 'fine tuning' or some other dubious reason that would put their product on the right side of the fences of 'high end'.
From the customer's perspective: we could say that it's entirely a placebo that lets them adjust-in what they believe to be right, and thus confirm their own presuppositions about it through the well-documented power of expectancy bias. Or they're making small changes to the level at the input (but not frequency response or distortion), with moderate adjustments to the load resistance and perceiving those level changes as sounding 'better', 'more direct', 'harder', 'softer', etc.
Changing the loading on a 12Ω cartridge coil from 200Ω to 60Ω would increase insertion loss by 1dB, enough to cause a perceived change in sound quality that may not be interpreted as the level change that it is. In extreme cases, where the preamp has very poor overload margin (if passive RIAA equalisation is used, for instance), then increasing the loading to bring the nominal level at the input down could also mitigate preamp overload, leading to improvements in sound quality.
Like you say, 100-150Ω works perfectly for almost all LOMC cartridges (a few very-low-output outliers are best dealt with using step-up transformers into MM inputs IMO), and I would agree with you 100%. 100Ω enough resistance to keep insertion loss below 1dB with a typical 12Ω coil (Audio Technica), low enough to absorb RF peaks to prevent resonant detection, and allows a sufficiently large load capacitor to shunt away HF/VHF/UHF radio-frequency interference.
Responding the claim that trans-impedance (current-input) MC loading affects the mechanical compliance of the stylus by a significant degree:
The statement is true in the same sense that I might say that the idea that a man flapping his arms up and down gives him the ability to create lift and fly is a myth.
Of course, it stands to reason that if you flap your arms you will create lift, but the effect is so negligible that it is meaningless in much the same way as the electrical power dissipated in a cartridge's coils/resistance is capable of changing the compliance by any real degree. The short-circuit/trans-impedance condition leads to the highest level of electrical power dissipation (and therefore mechanical resistance) since the system's resistance to current is minimised, and even then it is a tiny fraction of a percent compared to the mechanical power in the system.
Cartridge coils are most certainly not efficient transducers designed for maximum power extraction such as alternators. They are sensors optimised for tracking/bandwidth and linearity - much like acoustic loudspeaker drivers with eye-wateringly low power efficiencies.
This is the classic Audiophile intuition fallacy. It sounds plausible on the face of it, but it's mathematically negligible to the point of meaninglessness. I would highly recommend you do a little calculation at 5cm/s and compare this via mechanical compliance vs. the electrical dissipation of 500µV through a 10Ω coil...
Take the Audio Technica AT33SA cartridge. It has an output of 0.4mV at 5cm/s cantilever velocity. This means that if we shorted the output with the lowest impedance possible (maximum mechanical resistance from the coils due to maximum electrical power absorption) we would get 16nW of power removed from the system.
If an object moving at 5cm/s is dissipating 16nW of power against an unknown force, we can easily work out the force to be 320nN (nanoNewtons).
So we now have 320nanoNewtons and 76micrometres - translating to a resistive/dynamic compliance figure of 238 metres per Newton. The AT33SA give a figure for µcm/dyne so let's convert, giving a figure of 238,000×10-6/dyne. You can see where this is going already with all the zeros.
Now, the AT33SA specs mechanical compliance as: 10×10-6cm/dyne (100Hz)
So our electrical compliance is 23,800 times greater than the mechanical compliance... If we sum them together, we see that shorting the cartridge degrades reduces the compliance from 10cm-6/dyne to 9.99958×10-6cm/dyne - or something like a 0.004% change.
So what explanation do you have for loading affecting tonality?
A charitable explanation would be that people are misinterpreting the slight/borderline imperceptible level changes of 1dB or so (going from 100x to 10x the coil resistance, or from 10x to 5x - for example) as differences in tonality.
A non-charitable explanation would simply be that they're changing a setting and believing that they're going to hear a difference (brighter/warmer/sweeter/hints of coconut - whatever is in vogue), and then confirming the prevailing opinion put about by the subjective tradition... Many such cases.
Are you suggesting that the 'loading switch' is there merely for show rather than actually doing anything (like affecting the sound)?
The loading switch is easy to implement without any analogue design knowledge, so can be thrown in by anyone as a marketing point. Many cartridges specify a load impedance around ten times the coil resistance, initially for the purposes of using a matching transformer because valves have dreadfully limited gain and noise performance in low-impedance applications, but this has lead to the loading mythology for solid-state inputs where it should otherwise be fixed around 100-200Ω with 470-1000pF to damp 8-30µH of inductive resonance. As stated before, variable loading causes small level changes that may or may not be perceived and misinterpreted.
The sound - too vague. Detuning the resonance of a LOMC cartridge doesn't affect the audio frequency response, distortion et al. on the front end in the audio band when suitable resistor and capacitor values are selected, but is highly desirable, if not mandatory for a well-designed MC input in service of preventing RF detection. The range of values that do this lie in very narrow range, therefore a variable loading switch is undesirable as it will inevitably allow the user to either create an RF peak which will have to be compensated for in some highly compromising manner (such as a series resistor with Johnson noise or simply a low-cost IC input with a noise figure well in excess of 12dB against 500µV/10Ω), or pull the level at the input down too low and reduce signal-to-noise ratio.
Rinse and repeat ad-nauseam... Level changes are best implemented via the volume control rather than at a lowest signal strength in the entire path!
The moving-magnet phonostages here are optimised for a total input capacitance agreeable to virtually all MM cartridges on the market once tonearm and cable capacitance are taken into account. As the input capacitance works as part of an RF input filter, reducing or removing it would increase the likelihood of interference in use. If the need for reducing capacitance is felt, then the best course of action is to reduce the length of the leads from the turntable. This is facilitated by the compact size of the phonostages here, allowing closer placement.
Will you make a power amplifier?
Eventually, yes! At the moment, the company suffers from space limitations when is comes to storing parts, and a standalone or integrated power amplifier requires large parts that take up plenty of space. Once the company moves to new premises then work will begin on a linear power amplifier project...
