Favourite budget MC Tx.

[Phil Y]

Hello all,

Firstly, I hope you are all well.

The question of going to a moving coil has raised its head again in my mind and never having used one, I don't have any transformers so I would need these as well as the cartridge.
So, does anyone have any favourite moderately priced transformers?
Obviously, there is the WD ones and if I already had those I would use them. As I don't, it would be silly not to consider other options.
The WDs are £150 so lets say up to £200 or so as a limit. Sowter and Lundahl come to mind but I'm sure there are many others. I would also be happy to buy a second hand commercial unit if in the same price range.

Phil.

[bob orbell]

Phil, all well here and I hope you are too, bloody bored though , I now use Lundhl, as kindly donated by Richard some years ago, I obtained a PCB for the transformers but had to modify the earthing arrangement because of hum, but very happy now and find them more natural sounding than the round WD SUT. I still have the two WD SUT and if you would like to try them you are welcome. Let me know and I can post them to you. Bob

[Richard]

Hi Phil and Bob, yes doing all right up here so far thanks,

Phil, I know it's not what you asked for but what about an active DIY head-amp project? There are lots on the web. I was looking at W M Leach common emitter which could be easliy built on vero board and battery powered... It's been a while since I had a low op mc (I have a Denon DL160 high op mc at the moment) but when I had an Ortofon MC20 the step up TXs were really just to get it going and active head amps (or higher quality TXs) were the way forward, just a thought.

[Phil Y]

Hello Bob,

You don't happen to know which model your Lundahls are do you? They do quite a range.
Thanks for the offer on the WDs but no need yet, I'm just at the scouting out ideas stage, I don't even have a particular cartridge in mind as yet.

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day who has just changed from an Ortofon 2M Black(some rate as the best MM available) to an Audio-technica AT33sa and he says he is totally blown away by the improvement. This has what has got me thinking about a MC. There are many people out there with less capable systems than mine using moving coils.

Phil.

[Phil Y]

Hi Richard,

I suppose an active is a possibility, not really considered that.
Mmmm, even more research needed then!

Phil.

[bob orbell]

Hi Phil, LL9206 the gain can be set at 1 to 5-10-20, very small transformers and well respected, the PCB I use is from kandkaudio.com and the cartridge is an Ortofon Kontrapunkt b. there is a picture on the forum somewhere. Bob

[Shane]

I’ve been using a pair of these for about 15 years with various Denons (103D, then a 304, then a stock 103) and have always found them to be really good. Admittedly they were only £15 then, but I still think they’re pretty good value. Originally designed for the BBC as microphone transformers, I believe.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F383462249907


I mounted mine in a small alloy box, and by rewiring my arm to terminate in a 5-pin DIN, I was able to wire up the transformers in a fully balanced input configuration, which has made them pretty much immune to hum.

[Greg.]

Depends on the cartridge output. If using a relatively high output cartridge, a ratio of 6:1 would be fine but it would be inadequate for a low output model where generally, at least 10:1 ratio is a minimum requirement and 20:1 works even better. I suspect something around 16:1 would be ideal, IME.