Zesto Audio Andros Deluxe II Phonostage Reviews

5 Rating 3 Reviews

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Phone:

909.931.9686

Email:

joel.m@upscaleaudio.com

Location:

2058 Wright Avenue,
2058 Wright Avenue
California
91750

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“Thank you to Bill for his very helpful advice with this purchase. Beautiful tonality, highly resolving, low noise floor, coherent sound and nice to look at! Using with a Bob's device SUT (from Upscale) which further improves the S/N ratio and adds flexibility. Very happy with this purchase. Superb all around.”

Helpful Report

Posted 2 years ago

“This unit is very impressive. I use the moving coil stage to listen to microgroove records played on my VPI TNT III turntable. I use the moving magnet stage to listen to 78s played on an Esoteric Sound Trovatore turntable. This unit replaced a Manley Chinook for microgroove records and an Audio Research PH3 for 78s. I listen to jazz, classical, and rock on microgroove records. Most of my 78s are blues and jazz from the 1920's and 1930's; some of them are rare, meaning that there are only 1 - 10 known copies, and that my copy might be in mediocre condition. The microgroove records have a wide and deep soundstage, the instruments are well spaced, and the imaging is solid. The timbre is well defined. There is plenty of detail. The attack and decay for instrument sound is long and well defined. Despite the additional detail, the phonostage is also very musical. Lastly, it has plenty of muscle throughout the frequency range; for example, the string bass in jazz is always present and apparent. I did not know whether I would hear an improvement in sound for 78s because the phono cartridges are a set (78s use a range of stylus sizes so I have several cartridges on detachable headshells) of fairly basic Grado cartridges. I was pleasantly surprised by the improvement from my previous phonostage. 78s are mono so imaging is not important, but this has all the other advantages that I heard from microgroove records. One of my records is Duke Ellington's first record, which was recorded in 1924. There are only 3 known copies of that record, my copy is in good condition, and I'm probably hearing better sound from those songs than anyone has heard since they were recorded 98 years ago. That makes me very happy. I would strongly recommend the Zesto phonostage.”