Best resistors for use in phono stage?

Link all components, the Vishay foil have a 'sound' due to the leaded construction inductance. I question the use of 'naked' foils other than for cachet as they are subject to both mechanical and environmental conditions.

Fanatical resistor precision is swamped by capacitor tolerances which are orders of magnitude larger.

Z-Foil Datasheet

All components have sonic signatures. Whether a particular part is suited to a system can only be evaluated in situ.

Beware of FanBoy recommendations.

What passes through the loading resister goes to ground.  The signal going to the rest of the phono stage does not pass through this resistor.

Incorrect. Ground is a reference to the Earth Safety. Zero Volts Audio (0vA) is the signal reference. 0vA may not be Earth referenced.

The current is equal in all parts of a circuit. Basic Ohm's Law.

If one sets the reference to the audio signal line, 0vA will show the inverse signal.

One must be aware of "too much of a good thing". Depending on the equipment replacing all the Brand X parts with Brand Y may not yield the anticipated results.

What many fail to realize is an 'amplifier’, be it phono, line or power, circuitry is essentially a power supply regulator. Sadly many power supplies have very poor impedance vs frequency characteristics. The ubiquitous three terminal regulators in much of today’s equipment have vastly different impedance characteristics between the VCC and VEE models. Gross differences exist between the same 78xx part from divers manufacturers. One of the most astounding sonic improvements I ever experienced was linearizing the ± analog and 5VDC digital power supplies impedances in a CD player. I felt like I had been transported back to the control room and listening to the master 2T feed with a 2KW/ch amp stack.

Make haste slowly.

typo: 1kw/ch 😕

2x 300w for dual woofers

1x 200w for mid

1x 200w for tweet

Three terminal regulators - how true.

An engineer who once worked for me and is now a big shot @ AD says ’brand name’ is no longer a guarantee unless you can prove the provenance. AD will no longer accept ’failed’ parts without a paper trail.

It’s a sad state of affairs where the local electronics stores no longer exist and you have to buy from the bigs to ensure you get what you want.

That is indeed true but it does not mean that a decent quality trained ear can’t hear the differences in resistor qualities in a well executed circuit. so the idea of swamping does not hold true.

Apples and oranges. As stated previously everything has a sonic signature and everything interacts. Agreed that not all can hear signatures.

Unless one matches capacitors or matches resistors to measured C, there are audible deltas that some may misattribute to component rather than FR errors. A single 5% part at its ± value extremes yields ≈1.9 and 2.1. Such deltas are readily audible in the critical 2-5kHz region.

Some manufacturers go to such lengths to match values so the product matches the spec. One was Spica. When I rebuilt my TC-50 XO, I measured the drivers, inductors and resistors and then selected capacitors to match specification as closely as possible. The imaging improvement was astounding relative to the aged originals, all of which still measured within their tolerance. We could debate the contribution of replacing EL & Mylar w PP vs. tolerance compensation.

Bottom line:  E V E R Y T H I N G  matters