Gramophone Dreams

After living the previous month with PrimaLuna's 10-tube EVO 100 phono stage, I kept checking in with myself to see if I found the MasterPhono transistory—hard, shallow, gray—but it never did. Instead, it walked a narrow line between hard and soft, dry and wet, warm and cool—leaning maybe 10% towards wet and warm on the most atmospheric recordings. It did not attenuate reverberation or diminish atmosphere. I never consciously wished for tube treats I wasn't getting.

With the $1k Lenco
With the plastic Denon DL-103 cartridge, on the aluminum aftermarket headshell, I could probably get $1000 for my low-mileage Lenco L75 turntable. For that reason, I've named it "My $1k Lenco." I continue to marvel at how much solid, Technicolor excitement it pulls from the grooves of black discs. I'm not sure why this machine disarms my critical thinking and keeps my mind glued to the musical program. Through the MasterPhono, the DL-103 seemed to magnify and intensify tempo and key changes—a very engaging effect—while presenting recordings with an almost irrational sense of straightforward rightness.

Playing the same records first on the $8395 Dr. Feickert Blackbird with EMT's 912 arm ($6500 with DIN connection) and $3195 JSD6 cartridge ($18,000 total) and then, only minutes later, on the $1k Lenco is the kind of comparison I enjoy making because it's really not about better or best or which one comes closest to some preconceived ideal. It's about the feel of the ride. Imagine getting out of a modern Porsche and slipping into an unrestored Porsche 356.

To start, I loaded the DL-103 at 500 ohms and played one of my most-played albums: ragas by Ali Akbar Khan off the album Bangla Desh (LP, Connoisseur Society CS-2042). The sound was so physical and high-energy vibrant that I was forced to ask: In what ways was the Lenco's Ali Akbar Khan inferior to the Feickert's? In what ways did Lenco's steel arm and Denon's plastic-bodied cartridge reveal their lower-caste status compared to the EMT's refined and dynamic 912 arm and JSD6 cartridge, mounted on a modern turntable, the Feickert?

What I noticed most when switching from the high-resolution JSD6 to the less-detailed, less dynamic but earth-grounded DL-103 was that I enjoyed different aspects of the same recording. With the 103, the reverb and harmonics of Akbar Khan's sarod had a denser, more driving foundation. The Lenco-103-MasterPhono combo exposed the rhythmic forces driving "Raga Bhim Palashree," allowing me to trance out easily and float my way into a pulsing, percussion-driven delirium.

I have no idea why, but with PrimaLuna's EVO 100, I preferred the DL-103 with a very heavy, 50 ohm load, but with the MasterPhono, it seemed most natural and unaffected at either 100 or 500 ohms.

With Dynavector's XX2 MKII
When I wrote my first Dr. Feickert Blackbird story, in Gramophone Dreams #25, I did not notice that its back tonearm slot only accommodates 9" arms, that is, arms with a pivot-to-spindle distance between 205mm and 240mm. The 10.5" Schick tonearm, which I was planning on using for this report, has a pivot-to-spindle distance of 270mm, so it wouldn't work. Then I noticed how the Schick's arm collar looked like the arm collar on my Sorane/Abis SA-1.2 tonearm, which is in the range for a 9" tonearm. For fun and more learning, I installed the Sorane tonearm, loaded up with the $2150 Dynavector XX2 MKII moving coil cartridge. I chose the Dynavector because I use it a lot, and I knew in advance that it sounds alive and clear with voltage and current-drive preamps. The first thing I listen for when installing a moving coil cartridge is dynamic trackability. Treble detail, high-frequency spatiality, and a sense of inherent quiet happens when the stylus stays tight to the groove above 5kHz.

The upper-frequency energy of a full orchestra is harmonically extremely complex and also powerful. This energy can make a normally well-behaved stylus hop and shiver in the groove, which in turn makes the sound grainy and harsh. Loaded at 100 ohms, Dynavector's XX2 sounded smooth, quiet, and steady, as if it were perfectly damped for tracking anything. With the MasterPhono playing Ravel's Concerto in G Major for piano and orchestra from Les Deux Concertos pour Piano, with Samson François on piano and André Cluytens directing the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire (LP, HMV France C 069-10867), my attentions were lashed tight to the timbral accuracy, microdetail, and reverberant air of the top three octaves. With Dynavector's XX2 and MoFi's MasterPhono, the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire sounded bold, each instrument or group of instruments explicitly described. The midrange had a faint warm glow. Notes from François's piano had attention-grabbing heft and harmonic depth. High frequencies sounded more transparent than they usually do (though with a faint haze), and middle frequencies possessed electrostatic-headphone levels of textural and harmonic nuance. Ravel's Concerto en Sol Majeur came through with all its power and vigor intact.

And that was just the voltage drive.

Current drive
Dynavector's overachieving XX2 features a line-contact stylus on a solid boron cantilever with copper coils situated in the field of an Alnico-5 magnet. Coil resistance is specified at 6 ohms, which on paper suggests it should play nicely with transimpedance/current drive headamps. I've used the XX2 extensively with Sutherland Engineering's SUTZ transimpedance headamp. With that preamp, it plays vivid, transparent, and full-tilt boogie momentumwise.

My experience with current-drive moving coil stages began back in 2016 with Dynavector's P75 Mk.3 "Phono Enhancer" current-drive stage, which I used with Dynavector's 20X2 MC. At that time, I did not fully grasp what transimpedance was doing, electrically or sonically. It wasn't until I listened at length to Ron Sutherland's Little Loco transimpedance phono stage that I realized that with certain cartridges, current drive improves tracing of highly modulated grooves, resulting in blacker, quieter, more transparent, more beautiful soundscapes—that, anyway, is my theory, and it seems consistent with what is known about how current-drive phono stages work. Intriguingly, Dynavector's 20X2 and XX2 moving coils loaded by a dead short sound a lot like DS Audio's photo-optical cartridges and Grado's low-output Aeon3 and Epoch3 moving iron cartridges—all of which present recordings as emerging from a spooky-black quietness.

Once again playing Ravel's Concerto en Sol Majeur with Samson François, but this time through the MasterPhono's RCA current-drive input, that faint haze I had noticed in the top octaves in voltage mode had disappeared completely. What was preserved, and perhaps even enhanced, was the XX2's dynamics. Think clear-pond transparency with real jump and pow!-factor.

With the MasterPhono's current drive, the XX2 excelled at midrange textures and subtle dynamic shadings, with toe-tapping PRaT and above-average jump factor. But in other areas, it was no match for Ron Sutherland's SUTZ transimpedance headamp.

Sutherland Engineering's $3800 SUTZ transimpedance headamp doesn't do RIAA correction; think of it as a step-up transformer but without the transformer. Using the SUTZ into the MasterPhono's voltage-drive input at 40dB gain and 47k load—using the MasterPhono as a moving magnet phono stage, in other words—I heard a deeper clarity, a more sparkling transparency, backed up by less inhibited, more powerful dynamics plus thunderous bass that shook my easy-to-shake floor.

It is useful to think of this MoFi–Sutherland comparison this way: In the MasterPhono, current drive is just one feature among several. All those features require power and chassis space and cost money to execute well. Current drive is the Sutherland Engineering's SUTZ sole function, its raison d'être. Its transimpedance gain got all the funding, all the power, and 100% of the chassis space.

With MoFi's MasterTracker
Mark me down as a forever fan of moving magnet/moving iron cartridges. I see them as more relaxed, more right brain, more music first than moving coil cartridges, which often get too wowie-zowie hi-fi for my kind of relaxed, dreamy listening. Compared to moving coils, my favorite Grado, AudioTechnica, and Goldring moving magnets present recordings in a quiet, river-flowing manner that more closely resembles magnetic tape.

With that in mind, I decided to end this column by getting fully MoFi-d. I installed MoFi's "smart" cartridge, the $799 MasterTracker moving magnet, which I reviewed in Gramophone Dreams #20. "Smart" is my word, not MoFi's. I call it smart because it is a wisely conceived design that sounds vital and sharply focused. Mainly, though, I call it smart because it comes with the absolute best removable stylus guard in the history of all cartridges.

One of the first discs I played with the MasterTracker was the just-released, remastered, luxuriously repackaged reissue of Pharoah Sanders's classic 1977 album Pharoah, originally issued on the India Navigation label but now on Luaka Bop (LP, 6 80899 8008-1-5). This fanboy-collectable box set includes a second disc with two wildly different live versions of Sanders's masterpiece "Harvest Time." These previously unreleased recordings are from Pharoah's summer-of-'77 European tour. They throw an enlightening light on the mind of an artist I always want to know better. These three performances of "Harvest Time" are so different that whatever stays the same must be what Sanders regarded as the structural/conceptual core of this composition. Experienced as a group via this box set, these three versions offer a rare view into the creative thinking of an authentic poet-mystic.

Through the MasterPhono, MoFi's MasterTracker played all three versions in a relaxed, brilliant-but-dark manner that synched well, tone and texture-wise, with Mr. Sanders's mesmeric incantations. Every time I get tired of using moving magnets it's because I'm jonesing for the sparkle, dynamic vigor, and transient intensity that moving coils can provide. The MasterTracker MM feeding the MasterPhono played against type, delivering transient virtuosity with copious portions of sparkle and glow.

Are you ready for business class?
If your turntable cost more than a few thousand dollars and your taste in cartridges is moving further into four figures, MoFi's MasterPhono was created to assist you in your phonophile evolution. For me, a reviewer, it is what I'd been casting about for: alive and vigorous, clear and well-sorted, relaxed and natural, a mid-priced, user-friendly phono stage that's easy to recommend and enjoy.