Upgrading Guidance for vinyl replay

Due to carrying out a great deal of listening to vinyl replay, we have had the luxury of listening to a vast array of equipment in different permutations. The following information is intended to offer some help and advice on the many options and choices available with regard to upgrading priorities and allocating your hard earned budget.

We are constantly asked questions about upgrade paths along the lines of
"How much should I spend on my cartridge?"
"Is it worth having my arm rewired for a budget turntable?"
"Should I upgrade to the advanced dc motor kit or upgrade the tonearm or turntable?"
"What level of performance does the dc motor kit add to my deck?"

Assessing priorities to upgrade your system is not always easy and so we have tried to provide some guidance from the experience that we have acquired over the years. Much depends on your the level of performance you aspire to, coupled with your future plans (if any) and budget. For this reason the following guidelines are a matter of opinion and judgement.

If you are using a Vinyl front end then the accepted wisdom is to break down your budget approx as follows: Please note that if your system is CD based, then this breakdown is not valid as CD players do not vary in performance anything like as much as turntables.

Vinyl system split

Turntable / arm / cartridge = 50% of budget
Phono stage = 8% of budget
Amplifier = 21% of budget
Loudspeakers = 21% of budget

CD hi fi system split

For example if you have a £200 GBP CD player you could easily apportion up to £1000 GBP on the amp and £1000 GBP on the speakers which is the complete reverse of the philosophy for Vinyl.

If you are planning to upgrade over a period of time then you will split the budget based on your final investment in the system - needless to say there are all sorts of exceptions to the above guidance.

Breakdown of vinyl front end

To break things down further we would suggest the following in terms of contribution to a front end performance - Please note that the price of a component does not does not necessarily mean that it will deliver more performance for the money than something else and the percentages indicated below are based on the average performance contribution to the system - not the price of the item.

Turntable = 47%
Tonearm = 28%
Cartridge = 9%
Phono stage = 16%

DC motor upgrade/ arm upgrade/ or new turntable?

The dc motor kit will add around £700 GBP worth of performance to most turntables relative to the cost / performance of turntables. This makes it a very good investment - Increasing the performance of a turntable is vastly more effective than cartridge upgrades.

The motor upgrade is usually as effective as upgrading to a Silver tonearm but this depends on the quality of your current turntable motor drive.

Upgrade comparisons

The upgrades below are scored in terms of performance relative to one another.

Some of these items are outstanding in terms of their value for money. All prices are quoted at UK retail.