A few years ago I bought a Phasemation T-500 SUT on a whim while on vacation in Asia. The T-500 has both XLR and RCA inputs but only has RCA outputs. It also has a grounding post in the back.
If I were to use the T-500 with the MM stage of the Stellar phono would I connect the ground wire from the tonearm to the SUT or the phono stage?, Or would I connect the tonearm ground to the SUT then use separate ground wire to connect the SUT to the phono stage ground?
Confusingly my Basis 2001 turntable also has its own ground wire that I have just left hanging down the back. Is that supposed to be connected to something.
Thanks john! The T-500 has fixed 26 db gain suitable for 1.5 to 40 ohms. With the Hana ML I calculated the output to be 7.5 mV so it should be suitable into the MM stage of the SPP. Yes there was hum when the ground was connected to either the SUT or SPP but no direct into the MC of the SPP.
What is your experience soundwise with using the SUT into MM stage at vs straight into the MC stage of the SPP?
The SUT in my system certainly does not degrade the sound, I got them because I have multiple preamps that I swap in and out and one of them has mm input only
With the SPP I feel it adds a bit to the dynamics and opens up the soundstage
Just for the record…
I connected a Bob’s Devices SKY-20-S to the SPP and my impression was that lower frequencies were seemed slightly attenuated but mid-bass was presented with more “fullness” and in general decays and reverberations were more pronounced. No hum, dead silent with the SUT sitting atop the SPP. A pretty good combination of gear all in all.
Is it worth the $1650 for the SUT? For me, yes.
(Clearaudio Performance-> Hana Umami Red-> SUT->SPP-> BHK Pre)
! A vintage VPI HW-19/Zeta I have owned since the 1980’s and Basis 2001/Graham 2.2.