Stereomour/ Pre amp combinations

[kevin flynn]

Hello All,

I am very happy with my Stereomour II.  I am interested to find out more about others experience with what types of preamp will play nicely with this design, esp for vinyl.  (I know Bottlehead makes several!) 

I currently have a couple of preamps, (quite nice ones) neither of which appears to play particularly  nicely with the Stereomour, -i.e. sound as good as direct inputs to the onboard passive pre. 

Any help appreciated regarding cues re. impedance matching / others' experiences with successful pairings. (If the only/best recourse is to add the 'quickie' to pair with my reduction, that wouldn't be the worst case.)

Thanks,
K.

[Paul Birkeland]

Hello Kevin,

Are you running out of room on the volume pot on the Stereomour when you're playing vinyl?  What about your other sources? 

Does the Reduction have the integration upgrade? (that will raise the gain)

If you just need more gain out of your vinyl rig, here are some options:

1.  Put a Quickie between your Reduction and SMR2.
2.  Build an Eros (the Eros has significantly more gain)
3.  Get a higher output cartridge (especially true if you have something like a 2-3mV cart)
4.  Install the Integration if you haven't already.

-PB

[kevin flynn]

Thanks Paul,
Actually, to the extent there's a volume issue, it may be on the vinyl side.  My speakers are notably inefficient (about 88 db) but that's been ok for my room set up.  Even with hi-eff (Altec Valencia) I tend to max out volume pots, though with considerably more output on the Altecs.

The question really comes from curiosity about why my preamps (Don Allen gen 2 and VTA SP-14), which work quite well with their respective counterparts don't cut the mustard (i.e. aren't in the same ballpark sound-wise) with the SM2 in 'passive' mode. 

These (IMHO) are pretty nice preamps, so I'm left thinking the issue must be one of matching??
Curious about others' experiences here.
Grazie,

K

[Paul Birkeland]

Well, the Quickie is an inexpensive experiment that could answer that question.

The SMR2 is not a particularly difficult load to drive.

[denti alligator]

I use a Quickie in between my Seduction and Steremour when I need more volume. It works well. I wouldn't say it improves the sound in any way, but I can't tell that it takes away from it, either. So it does the job of boosting the volume when I'm playing vinyl.

Some day I hope to get an Eros.