Some like no added loading at all. Jonathan Carr, the designer of Lyra cartridges advocates no added loading, provided that the downstream electronics can withstand the ultrasonic peak that will be passed through without overloading. In that sense, the phono stage does matter. That overload can also come from RFI that is picked up by the cartridge and the phono cabling. A friend had a preamp that had a fairly bad problem with noise (not hum or powerline noise) which he asked me to help him alleviate. I could tell that it was RFI being turned into audible noise. When we checked the loading of the phono stage, it turned out that the manufacturer default setting was 100k (i.e., very little loading), and when we switched to 1k, the noise went away without much other change in the sound.
Best resistors for use in phono stage?
It wondering if there's a better SQ resistor for this purpose? My new to me phone stage has a slot to try custom values. I need 380 and or 390 ohm. Thanks for the help.
52 responses Add your response