Last year my brother bought his first “proper” home stereo – a Rega 3 with Elys, Rega Brio amp, Marantz CD6006 CD player and Neat Motive SX speakers on dedicated stands and a Quadraspire rack. Since he got it, he has largely given up telly and has discovered the joys of vinyl. As have my sister-in-law, nephew and niece!
He’s already looking at some upgrades and was thinking about getting a Rega Fono MM Mk3. I don’t know very much about Rega kit - given the stuff he’s already got, is this a worthwhile upgrade for £200? Would a separate phono amp make that much difference?
Tend to agree. Fono won’t make a huge difference. Next upgrade is to replace the Brio amp. Save for a Nait 5 or similar. Then any other upgrade to TT/ cart or phono pre amp will make more of a difference.
Meanwhile enjoy the music for a while.
The Brio phono stage is just fine for this system and I don’ t think the Fono is a great improvement over it, if at all and at least in this context. Better spend this on more music as Neilb1906 said, or save it for a more worthwhile upgrade later.
The NEO PSU is a worthy addition to the P3 and also has the benefit of allowing you to fine tune the playback speed with a suitable strobe.
I’d imagine the Brio MM input will be capable of doing a good job, I built a very similar system for a friend recently and he’s been very happy with the results. He has a brand new P3 with a Elys 2 cartridge, B&W 707 S2 standmount speakers with Chord Company Clearway X cables all running through a Rega Brio amp.
I had a sit and listen to it with him now it’s settled in a bit over the weekend just gone and felt it did a great job given the relatively modest system cost, all in it was around £2k.
