"Phil North" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I took a bit of a gamble and bought a valve phono stage off ebay recently.
Upon hearing it I thought the sound was great but lacking in bass but put
that partly down to the equipment I was using it with (home made speakers
that have lived in the loft for 10 years).

I took it round to Keiths on Tuesday and tried it on all his amps and it
was still bass light on his Dynavox and WAD amps but to my ears was
absolutely superb on the triode amp. This amp seemed to bring out the bass
and make the sort of sound I am searching for, something I could listen to
all day with any kind of music.


:-)

(Cheque's in the post, Phil.... ;-)



We did some comparisons with Keiths EAR phono stage and on the triode amp
I thought the Ming Da was better. On the other amps the EAR was best but
for me that was only due to the better bass and myself and Nigel thought
the EAR had too much bass at times.


Worth pointing out here that Shiny Nigel has the same EAR phono stage and
he's been in two minds about it since he got it. (Lasted nearly a fortnight
before it went tits-up - OK, fixed in an instant at the EAR manufactory some
10 minutes from here, I have to admit...!!)


This phono stage cost me 140 pounds plus 60 quid delivery from China, and
with a few tweaks to get some bass out (suggestions welcome) or the
cloning of Keiths triode amp may be the only one I ever buy.
I make no claims to it being hi-fi but as something to make my music
enjoyable I love it.



'Not hifi, but *enjoyable*'..??? (Now, there's a thought!! :-)


OK, in case anyone is interested, a bit more information:

The object of the exercise was to check Phil's suspicions that the Ming Da
phono stage was a bit 'bass light' and to compare it directly with my
EAR834P phono which has a rep for being a bit fat-arsed and is generally
despised by one here who shall remain nameless. (Won't they Nick? ;-). This
was using a Shure V15 V xMR into B&W DM2As which have got a good bass if
well fed, can be a bit woolly if not and the bass from the Shure can bend
iron bars, if needed..... :-)

Straight off, on material like Bjork and Pink Floyd (even the Beatles at one
stage) it was apparent that the bass was much lighter on the Ming Da.
Whether it was *too* light was another matter, however. The Ming Da
(beautifully constructed inside and out) had/has an extremely pleasant
character of its own (hence the triodes, see below) with a very nice tone
(even on the Chinese valves), superb air and detail and a very 'poised'
overall presentation.

At one stage I was switching (irritatingly :-) between DSOTM and a
beautiful vinyl rip of the same (from another regular here) and, despite no
attempt being made to synchronise the two sources, it was hard to split them
in terms of sound level and overall tonality. This indicated/proved that my
rig with the EAR was not a million miles different to someone else's rig
(same deck, asitappens, different cart and different phono) which was enough
to suggest the Ming Da was the Honda C50 to the two 70's Triumph
Tridents.... :-)

However, not being a devotee of the modern, universally compressed 'digital'
music that is so popular today, I don't subscribe to the theory that 'one
size fits all' and have been in the business of selecting amp/speaker
combinations to suit the various sources for a little while now. (What else
can you do, now that Tone Controls have been phased out...??) My suspicion
was that the phono stage was wanting to do finer things than rattle my
pictures with Bjork's 'Headphones' (which, bless it, it do to a degree!! :-)
so I put it onto the 2A3 SET to try summat 'completely different'....

Bingo! Different story, different picture!! The resultant sound (Joan Baez)
was quite *exquisite* - and one of the records I played was a 1960
original!! (Plenty of fizz but tonally as pure as the day it was made, thus
shooting a lot of silly theories you see spouted here about wear and loss of
treble *right* up the chuff...!!) All I'm going to say is that I could see
someone had been a bit 'quietly moved' by the experience!! ;-)

Unfortunately I hadn't got round to cutting my Line Stage into the equation
until this morning, but having done so now, I suspect the overall boost to
the sound would have found the bass Phil was looking for. (Also swapping the
valves on the Dynavox amp for JJ Tesla EL34s...)

It looks like a repeat session is on the cards....


NP. Benny Carter & his orch. 'Further Definitions'

(No 'recording' - he *is* in the room......!!!)

:-)