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Upgrade to SFP-1 Phono Stage

Posted by Mike Carrick on March 17, 2000 at 06:26:49:
Any thoughts or advice on the following will be appreciated.
I have a good LP front end with m/c into a Sonic Frontiers phono stage -
early non Signature version. Amp is Assemblage L-1 / ST-40 pre-power,
speakers are decent small transmission lines.
The sound is very good, and LP is significantly better than CD.
However, I have two small concerns:
. female vocals seem to lack a bit of body and have a slight edge
. piano can sound a touch jangly, almost a slight clatter to the sound.
The problems are slight but I'd like to fix them - esp if I get an overall
upgrade at the same time.
I don't have the problems via CD, and didn't have them with the old Naim
amps, so I think it's in the phono stage.
I've changed tubes to Mullards and Tungsram which helped.
I propose to upgrade the capacitors. I hope to get most of the benefits
of the 'signature' upgrade by this - very little else gets changed
fundamentally by the signature upgrade.
The caps in question are :
2 of 2uF
4 of .22uF
2 of .1 uF
all Multicap PPMFX metalised polypropylene.
My quandary is whether to go for:
. Multicap PPFX polypropylene and alum. foil, as used in the
SFP-1 'Signature'
. the nominally better Multicap PPFX-S or RTX (polystyrene) ones;
but if they are better, why don't SF use them in the Signature?
. VTV Silver foil PIO ... which I've seen highly recommended, but
have to regard it as an expensive risk!
If the VTV's are likely to give me what I really want, the money's not
a problem; but I'm reluctant to risk it on a wild goose chase if I can
get great results without risk with say the PPFX-S.
I stress that I don't want a massive change to the sound - it's superb
for all types of music, and even the problematic things are very good
really!
Any thoughts are welcomed.