Tech details and specs: Era Gold vs Reflex M

Hi everybody.

I live too far (Caracas, Venezuela) to receive an unit from the loan program . In the past, I needed to travel to France (speakers: JM Labs), Germany (Electronics: T+A) and USA (Turntable: Project + Ortofon / cables and accesories: Audioquest, WBT) to hear and buy my rig: there are no HiFi dealers in my country (!!!)
Needles to say, I use reviews and forums like this to try to imagine how a piece of equipment sounds in my system before I make a decision. One of the tools I use are the specs and tech differences between models. The First Reflex M Ultra-Linear was the 0131-358 in 2010. From then on, I understand there are more differences between the Era Gold and the Reflex M, so...

-Is the Era Gold now fitted with the Ultralinear circuit?
-Which are the most notable tech differences between them?
-How are the specs and circuit differences?
-Everybody that wrote on this forum said the Reflex M is by far a better product, so technically speaking what makes the difference?

From Graham himself: "...The unfortunate thing that valves should have proved to us by now, is that perfect specifications don't produce good sound!..." (April 21/2011)
Ok, Ok, but there are differences, no?
All kind of answers are welcome!
Thanks in advance!

Hi Francisco,
I can't answer your technical questions either! but, probably like many others, I did own an
Era Gold V for many years & upgraded to a Reflex.
It's a while ago now but I heard the difference almost on power-up as a more open & slightly 'cleaner' sound with better overall definition. The same general character as the Era remained -
a foot tapping 'musical' quality (do the cynics let us use that term anymore?) that keeps you listening into the early hours.
They don't sound vastly different IMO & I'm not sure I agree with your italicised 'by far' comment.
A non-technical & subjective answer.

Thanks Andrew - I knew you'd be able to help!

The Era Gold V was the first "ultra-linear" device in that the AD opamps had reduced open-loop gain resulting in a wider open-loop frequency response. It led to a loose bass because RIAA EQ gain was approaching the open-loop gain of the opamps. It was quite an endearing sound I liked very much. Latter versions dispensed with the AD opamps because their consistency was going down, and we were already throwing away over 30% of the chips. These were replaced with a different opamp which has FET inputs and the open loop gain is manipulated by our proprietary "ultra-linear" technique. The results are extremely close to the original and I personally can't hear any difference.

The original "Era Gold Reflex" was a tweaked Era Gold V, but the design changed after a couple of years and the name changed to Reflex M. The "ultra-linear" technique was observed to serve a flat response best, and this being RIAA had a falling response, so the opamp choice was for one that met the same gain profile. In a way this complied better with the desired loop-gain, which I wanted to be constant end to end. It is "ultra-linear" by default.

A moving coil version, the Reflex C, was introduced. This is disimilar to the M version in that the gain profile is more like the Era Gold V, but it does moving coil and suits many MC users needs.

Further work on the gain profile - to get it to a constant end to end - resulted in the NPS invention (new phono stage - soon to be launched). However, because we're at the limits of signal to noise, like the Reflexes, moving coil cannot be given the same treatment, so it will only be of interest to high quality MM, high output MC and high output MI cartridge users.