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built-in phono stages -- good idea?

It seems to me that the best location for a phono stage is at the tone arm wire end -- in the turntable. My thoughts:

This would bring the following benefits to its performance:
Elimination of the sensitive and susceptible phono cable
Reduction of the need for a balanced phono stage
Reduction of noise without the need for balanced design -- half of the battle is won already.

Both are significant advantages, I think. But this puts some limitations on the design of the phono stage:
Needs to be very compact solid state design, probably SMD. Access to loading options and mc/mm switching need to be thought out and accessible from rear or underneath. Again, both doable.


Why don’t we see this more often? Your thoughts?


Herman
gera

Showing 1 response by jperry

jperry
2,468 posts
 
An interesting idea, but difficult in execution. Ortofon went part of the way there on their early SPU cartridges building a transformer into the headshell. See the excerpt below from the Ortofon wedsite:

"Because of the very low impedance and the very low output, the first SPU cartridge, the SPU-GT, had a small transformer integrated with the cartridge units in the GM- housing, yielding about 7mVolt at 5cm/sec suitable for an MM input sockets with 50kOhm loading. "
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