Upgrading from Rega P10

Written by someone with no experience in owning this turntable. As always, your contributions are meaningless.

 

@LivLif Have you played with VTA? It has made a considerable different in the openness and widening of the soundstage when I did. Perhaps getting some shims would make a noticeable impact on the SQ, to the degree of satisfying your current need for upgrading?

Have you also tried other carts and phono preamps? Might not be what you're specifically looking for at the moment but doing so has elevated the SQ and provided so much more nuance, textures, and effortlessness to the sound.

 

Mad as usual I see.

 

The natural phonostage for P10/Aphelion is Aura.
If the price is no concern that's what I'd get (Aura) for my P8

 

You're never tired of being wrong, I see. Your streak is impressive.

 

There is so many choices that it is not an easy task.
I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I would try and listen to the Well Tempered Versalex (or the Amadeus 254 GT if the budget allows)



I have been very impressed with the WT turntables and they are a delight to use.

That said, my dream turntable (currently) is the Kuzma Stabi R with a Stogi 4 Point 9 tonearm

 

If it helps, I owned a Kuzma Stabi (but not the R) with the Reference tonearm for a while. Nice design but the sound was very soft. That would have been perfect had I been using hard-sounding overly bright speakers such as Klipsch but since my speakers were Harbeths, it wasn't the greatest synergy so I sold it off.

Extremely quiet motor. You couldn't hear it nor feel it running at all. As I said; impressive design - just not the greatest match with my other gear.

 

Yes, in the end it is all about the synergy and tastes. Thanks for the heads-up
Still great piece of equipment and if I were in the market for such expensive turntable I would be very careful with all partnering gear.

 

From my limited experience and from what I read an actual room and floors can play a part of what TT would work best. If you you have concrete floors with tiles you can explore high-mass german turntables, which can work better then low mass in such environments. Acoustic Signature, Transrotor, Acoustic Solid, etc. If you have wooden floors - perhaps you will hard time finding better solution then SME turntables (which now unfortunately priced too high IMHO) or Avid.

 

There's a lot of useless vitriol in this thread.

I will start by saying I do not have a Rega / Aphelion, but I considered it before purchasing a Pure Harmony Fidelity and a Hana Umami Red, so I believe I'm playing in a similar ballpark.

Others have suggested looking at your phono. To that end, I will say that before buying the Pure Fidelity, I upgraded to a Sutherland Little Loco Mk2 and was genuinely surprised by how it improved my analog front end. (I was using a Thorens TD160 Super and a Dynavector DV20x2 at the time). The Pure Fidelity / Hana / Sutherland combo is magical to my ears.

I'm not suggesting you don't consider upgrading your TT and cart, simply offering a perspective.

 

I just want yo say THANK YOU!!! My local turntable dealer suggested the same. Did exactly as you both suggested and all I can say is WOW!!! Incredible improvement and I would highly recommend this to any Rega user with a Rega cart. Best advice ever!

 

Next cut all the corners off the books in your room

 

whats your point

 

Were you having problems with inner groove distortion? I may have missed it.

 

No never had any issues with IGD

 

I fully don't understand

 

Is this how we want to represent ourselves?

 

Really? I've always used all 3 screws on my P6 and never had any IGD and it sounded good so I figured it was aligned correctly. At least your itch to modify your system is scratched for the time being.

 

The OP never had a problem with IGD.

The Rega 3-point mount works quite well and makes it easy for any audiophile to mount a Rega cartridge on a Rega tonearm and get good sounding results. The alignment is not optimal however, which means sound is not optimal, which is why experienced cartridge installers (and audiophiles who've gained sufficient experience to do their own at least near-expert installations) use the more typical 2-point mount and a high quality protractor to do a Baerwald alignment.

Did you know also that some cartridges (e.g., the Ortofon Cadenza series) have a cleverly designed top plate that allows for a couple of degrees of azimuth adjustment? The precision molded-in standoffs are compressible with a small amount of extra torque in the headshell screws (which won't even microscopically deform the headshell). Very handy that is. I wish more carts had that feature. I've used it more than a few times when doing Ortofon installations on Rega arms.

 

I have an Exact on a RP6 using 3 bolts and definitely get IGD

 

You should try better styli maybe.

 

Ania Pro is up next when this Exact wears out

 

I dont think the stylus is better on that.

 

ah that’s right. It’s the regular ania that has the less advanced profile