Hagerman Piccolo

The Hagerman Piccolo in DIY kit form arrived from USA by post today. From the photo of the pcb, the surface mounted FETs (6 pcs) are already in place. I purchased from them the 2 power supply ICs and they too were soldered on. The only components left were the capacitors and resistors. I intend to use it without the rotary switches which control gain and input loadings, so had jumpers in place of the switches S1 and S2.

Thorhauge MC step up pre-amplifier

I traded my Linn turntable (without arm) for a Thorhauge. It is a solid state discrete FET battery powered pre-amplifier with 26dB gain. In fact when this friend from Penang suggested it to me, I have already placed my order for the DIY kit of Hagerman Piccolo FET moving coil head amp which also recomended battery power supply.

On using the Thorhauge, I find it absolutely quite and noiseless, and eventhough the gain is high all the slight hum present when using transformer MC step up was completely gone. Changing the input loading between 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 & 250 ohms has the effect of some treble and gain boost or cut. Still have not got the optimum setting yet.

When the Hagerman Piccolo arrives, I intend to house it inside the Thorhauge and keep their individual set of inputs/outputs separate and only share a common power supply.

Phono cartridges

Now I have 4 cartridges:

1) Rega Bias MM cartridge

2) Benz Micro MC20E2L MC cartridge

3) Denon DL103R MC cartridge

4) Lyra Dorian MC cartridge

Three of them shown below:

Comparing the cantilever, the Benz Micro (red body) is no different from the Rega (green) which is an MM cartridge. The Lyra's solid boron cantilever is only about half the diameter.

With only one tonearm in use and the difficulty to rotate them, not to mention the risks involved in switching cartridges often, I decide to sell the first two. Since I have a Linn Itok LVII lying around, I will mount the Denon on it and add this second tonearm to my AS turntable. Suitable components are ordered or in the process of fabrication.

Lyra Dorian

Finally received my Lyra Dorian, bought used via Echoloft Singapore. My most expensive cartridge so far, it costs RM1,350 used and it is an entry level Lyra, in fact the cheapest LYRA and the stylus is from Namiki, not the usual Ogura. Talk about the embarrasing purchasing power of Malaysians using the Ringgit. Condition when received is good, and tested well on my AS turntable and Kuzma arm. The frequency response at both ends seems to be better than the Denon 103R and more detailed. The only setback is it sensitivity to groove noise making it unsuitable to play older/noisy records and the output is rather high - in fact too high such that I have to figure out how to reduce the MC step up gain without degrading the sound. The pictures below tell a thousand words.......