All transformers require excitation current before they will pass any signal. Where do you think the S.U.T. gets its excitation current from?

Has it a power supply? No. So obviously it uses some of the signal as excitation current.

That would be OK but for the fact that magnetic cartridges don’t have a linear response – their bass is much weaker than the highs, and so more is ‘stolen’ from the lows.

That’s the reason you’ll often see additional components inside a S.U.T.’s casing – these being used to straighten-out the frequency response.

I think you’ll agree by now that the Elevator EXP step-up amplifier is the better option.

Bass frequencies are the lowest audio frequencies, below which everything becomes DC or direct current. DC doesn’t commutate from positive to negative – it doesn’t ‘cycle’ – so it cannot be transformed. Low bass frequencies to a transformer move so slow that they’re ‘almost DC’, As a result transformers distort most of all at low frequencies.

All sorts of tricks and adjustments are employed to reduce this distortion – many include the use of expensive metals and labour intensive winding techniques in a bid to overcome the bass distortion. This is why good S.U.T.s are so expensive.

But the distortion is never really overcome and in the place of detailed bass, all the transformer can really do is ‘fudge’ the sound. You might have heard people refer to the bass they get as a ‘smooth chocolatey sound’? I suppose that’s similar to fudge….

The electronics of the Elevator EXP however, don’t cause anywhere near such levels of distortion, so all the bass details – the layering and the timbre (the characteristic sound of an instrument or voice) is there to be heard and enjoyed.

For a start, the Elevator EXP doesn’t hum. Transformers do. To be correct, the transformer itself doesn’t hum, but the magnetic surrounding fields easily get induced into it.

These magnetic fields are predominantly mains-borne. There are a number of hum sources including all your mains powered equipment, surrounding mains powered products, and even the wiring you see, and the house wiring you don’t see – all emitting magnetic fields by differing amounts.

The SUT, being a transformer, is influenced by them all. The result is hum. No matter how well shielded its case or how well you carefully position it, in most cases that isn’t very successful.

The Elevator EXP is an amplifier – it doesn’t contain a transformer so it’s harder for hum to be induced into it.

Low output moving coil (MC) with output in the region of 0.15 – 0.8 mV (ref 1kHz at 5cm/sec)

The Elevator EXP must always be used between cartridge and a moving magnet sensitivity input. It must never be used ‘post EQ’ – after the moving magnet phono preamp.

Item	Measurement
Input range	0.15mV to 0.8mV
Output (for input range)	2mV to 10mV, suitable for a moving magnet phono stage input
Maximum input	378mV rms (a very large overload margin)
Maximum output	4.914V rms
Gain	22dB (13) < 10Hz to 917kHz (-3dB points)
Input impedance	23, 30, 100, 840, 1000, 5100 and 47000 Ohms
Output (driving/source) impedance	300 Ohm
Recommended load impedance	47k Ohms phono stage preamp input
Noise at output	-99dB CCIR Q-pk
Distortion	0.02%
Frequency response	< 10Hz to 917kHz (-3dB points)
Channel balance	0.2dB
Channel separation	64dB
Size (approx.)	W: 107 x H: 50 x D: 180 (mm) inc. jacks