Advice: phono pre for Project Debut Carbon

Hi Franz

I'm using a Project Debut Esprit (I think it's more or less the same as the Carbon only a few years older and with an acrylic platter) fitted with the 2m Black cartridge and using a Reflex phono stage and I'm very satisfied with my system and the results I'm getting. I suppose you could go further than that with the Reflex but right now I'm very content myself.
Two upgrades that will get you quite far with the Debut are the Speedbox and the "Motor Kit", which is basically just a round shaped belt, new pulley for this belt type and dampening gromits for the motor fastening. This latter upgrade might be standard issue on newer models like the Carbon so check wheter or not your belt is already the round kind, otherwise it's well spent £30. It gets rid of some faint low frequency rumble and I found this simple mod to give a great surge in vividity to the music overall. The Speedbox I highly recommend getting especially if you're also planning to get a good phono stage. It provides a great leap in accuracy and coherency.
If you're still unsure what phono stage to get you could always make use of the GSP loan programme and try out the Reflex, or any other stage, for yourself at home.


Best wishes
Johan


Edited by suede - 10 Dec 2012 at 9:20pm

If you feel that the Reflex M is out of your budget you can also get the Green Version with its switched mode supply and upgrade to the PSU1 at a later date.

The Gram AMP 2SE is also excellent phono stage but the Reflex M UL is a definite step up.

I too would recommend that you go for the best you can reasonably afford, the Green Reflex with a later upgrade is a sensible option, but even at the other end of the scale the GA 2SE will bring you the unique GSP sound which is far superior to most other phono stages costing many times more.
Best advice is to take advantage of the loan scheme, but once you've heard the best it's difficult to resist.