Moving Coil cartridges have evolved from their early cumbersome high output predecessors to today's low output and sometimes hyper expensive designs.

This evolution happened because of advances in magnets. At one time magnets were so inefficient they had to be big, too big to be mounted on the stylus assembly, so the coil which was lighter was put there instead and the magnets mounted to the cartridge body. Amplifying devices were valves (tubes). Heaters were needed to make electrons flow in a vacuum and they were powered from alternating current. Valves therefore hummed. The moving coil had to have many turns to give sufficient output to get over the noise floor. Musical performance was dreadful.

With advances in magnets the Moving Magnet cartridge came into being, the new lighter magnets had moved onto the stylus assembly. Coils were still big to generate enough signal to get over the noise floor. MM cartridges have changed little since (apart from advances in stylus mechanisms and profiles).

In the quest for even lighter tracking and more "agile" cartridges, the emerging Hi-Fi industry woke up to the idea of using the new smaller efficient magnets on the cartridge body and putting a minimal number of turns on the stylus assembly. The result was the Moving Coil we know today - a very low output device that is pure mechanical genius. If only we could amplify it properly, CD would have no place in Hi-Fi today.

The one point that seems to have eluded common sense is the shape of the RIAA recording curve, necessary to fit enough groove on the disc surface. Because of this, 50Hz output is just 1/7th of the rated cartridge output. What else runs at 50Hz? (Americans, Japanese, etc, need to read 60Hz here) Mains frequency! It's in wires all around us and wires radiate a magnetic field which is picked up by signal cables feeding the ultra high gain stages needed for modern Moving Coils. Step-up transformers (being inductive devices) are obviously going to fare worse.

Thanks to the manipulative digital age and its squeaky clean soul-less music reproduction, plus our short memories, we expect the same noise performance from MC. It just can't be done. Whether you know it or not, you want exotic low output

Moving Coils that give out -92dB at 50Hz with better than 80dB signal to noise - that's an input referred noise level of -172dB! (we need to get real here) The best studio microphone amps don't do much better than -130dB. You can get down to -150dB, but at minus 273 degrees Celsius!

You commit anything between £300 and £3,000 on a Moving Coil cartridge and expect to hear it in its full glory using a single stage phono box. That box has to have a gain of 40,000 at 50Hz! But you understand that Hi-Fi separates are best and insist that the power amps that only have a voltage gain of 20 or 30 are separate for the best performance! Hypocrisy?

The Elevator EXP is a separate unit flat response 22,5dB gain stage (having its own outboard power supply) optimised for MC cartridges, that will boost the signal to Moving Magnet level. The less stressed MM phono stage that follows it, can then be realistically expected to deliver a good musical performance.

The EXP features video amplifiers that provide the bandwidth required for the absolute phase needed to reproduce instrumental and voice structure timbre, a sound-stage with depth and width, and the instant dynamics which makes the music and recording venue come alive.

Its input referred noise measures -130dB rms like studio microphone amps (Just take away your cartridge sensitivity in dB for the S/N). That means the hiss will be below the noise of a clean record, and in the case of the EXP, there is no hum provided the turntable components and arm lead are properly screened and grounded to the EXP ground post.

Its distortion is near non-existent at less than 0.01% (including the test oscillator's 0.003% distortion).

Rather than being designed for the convenience of the manufacturer, the Elevator EXP sports its cartridge loading switches on the front panel - for your convenience. Furthermore, we've included all the resistive loads you've been asking for.

The Elevator EXP is supplied complete with a PSU1-24 power supply for the best possible performance.

Elevator EXP Specifications / Technology:

PSU1-24 power supply

The power supply circuits do not employ switch-mode or DC-DC conversion. The RF produced by such devices gets into the signal path and modulates the signal, producing a set of pseudo frequencies that sing along with the music. This may make a stage sound rich, luscious and zingy, but it's not music.

DC coupling is used throughout each Elevator step-up transformer-less head amplifier. The zero volt rail is internally generated providing an absolutely clean ground. This allows the use of a single sided supply, and a simple 24 volt battery supply can therefore be substituted by the user for extremely critical listening.