Matt, I agree with the others that there’s nothing wrong with having to use the volume control in the upper part of its range, as long as you never find yourself wanting to turn it up higher than it can go.
Also, I looked at the specs of all of the components in your vinyl playback chain and I don’t see any way that you could overload anything at any volume setting, aside from possibly driving the amp into clipping in the unlikely event that your ears or the speakers don’t overload first.
Increasing the amount of gain that precedes the line stage from the present 60 db to say 71 db, which could be done by using a 20:1 SUT (26 db gain) into the Chinook’s 45 db MM input would probably result in your using the volume control at not much more than 12 o’clock, rather than at the 3 o’clock setting you mentioned. However it would also result in the possibility that on extremely high volume dynamic peaks on some recordings you might exceed the Jumbo Shrimp’s maximum input spec of 5 volts. (Based on the specs, overloading of the Jumbo Shrimp’s input would occur well before the Chinook would be overloaded). There’s no point to introducing that kind of marginality into your system, IMO.
Regards,
-- Al
Also, I looked at the specs of all of the components in your vinyl playback chain and I don’t see any way that you could overload anything at any volume setting, aside from possibly driving the amp into clipping in the unlikely event that your ears or the speakers don’t overload first.
Increasing the amount of gain that precedes the line stage from the present 60 db to say 71 db, which could be done by using a 20:1 SUT (26 db gain) into the Chinook’s 45 db MM input would probably result in your using the volume control at not much more than 12 o’clock, rather than at the 3 o’clock setting you mentioned. However it would also result in the possibility that on extremely high volume dynamic peaks on some recordings you might exceed the Jumbo Shrimp’s maximum input spec of 5 volts. (Based on the specs, overloading of the Jumbo Shrimp’s input would occur well before the Chinook would be overloaded). There’s no point to introducing that kind of marginality into your system, IMO.
Regards,
-- Al