Lack of Gain Settings?

It rather depends on what you're after regarding your vinyl listening, and not everybody is the same.

Take Westminster Choir, Festival Te Deum by Benjamin Britten. Although my copy is not on vinyl (it's a FLAC), it demonstrates the holographic - or not - characteristic of this piece dependant on the characteristics of the electronics reproducing it.

If my 65-year-old hearing can tell the difference between a warmed up power amplifier, then that same amplifier after being turned off, and then back on again - some characteristics of the electronic circuitry must have changed.

Any disturbance changes a system component's characteristics, including changes in ambient temperature and mains voltage variations over time.

But when we come to the exact frequency response tuning of a phono stage, and we decide to go and make a change to the gain of the circuit, it isn't just a mild, characteristic change. Switching from one level to another changes the frequency response. It might be incremental, but we have changed that characteristic.

However, we have also changed the component characteristics. To change the gain to another setting implies that redundant components exist. Those components are out of use most of the time, but when selected, they must adjust to new conditions.

In the case of a passive interstage equalised phono stage (the majority), the gain stage having the alteration in gain no longer has the same characteristics. Changing gain implies a difference in loop gain, and such a stage no longer has the same input and output impedance.

Driving a passive EQ section with a different source impedance changes the EQ: this was partly why tone controls became so unpopular, and no matter how phono EQ is done, it is precisely the same as tone controls, except fixed.

However, once you introduce gain control (switched or variable), the curve of the EQ changes with it.

This is why there are specialised products (such as ours) which are made within tight tolerances to reproduce the music, all other things equal (which generally aren't) to the same standard as the one sold to the next customer.

That's how I, as a designer, choose to do my job.

Great info folks! Can’t wait to get an Accession in my hands.