Can you run the HANA SL MC at 100 ohms?

What makes this tricky to understand is that MM cartridges **are** affected by the loading values at audio frequencies. This is because there are so many more turns of wire inside them- they have much higher inductance. So there is confusion and the whole thing spreads like a bad rumor. 

but the phonostage that needs loading down. Dave Wilson and Tom Evans (the Groove) believe in loading cartridges down.

If you understand that its the phono section that's reacting to the resonance of the cartridge and tonearm cable, you're far more likely to design a preamp that is resistant to the RFI generated by that resonance.


If you don't believe that its the resonance causing this issue, go get yourself a square wave generator and (with a suitable low level so you don't deGauss the cartridge) run it thru any moving coil cartridge you want and look at what happens to the square wave on an oscilloscope after its passed thru the cartridge. Spoiler alert: its unaffected at audio frequencies. So if that is the case, how in the hell can loading be affecting the cartridge frequency response at audio frequencies??

The simple and correct answer (Occam's Razor, for anyone whose gotten this far) is that it isn't.


The reason you hear tonality changes is simply because the designer of your phono section didn't take into account how powerful the RFI is that comes out of a LOMC setup (hint: it can be up to 30dB higher than the cartridge signal). So the phono section reacts- with brightness usually; loading the cartridge knocks out the resonance and thus tones things down. Its a band-aid approach.


Why do cartridge manufacturers specify a loading? Two reasons:
1) Most phono sections have problems on this account. Plus the manufacturer has no idea what tonearm cable you'll be using (so the capacitance in parallel with the inductance of the cartridge is an unknown; most use 100pf as a general rule of thumb). So they specify some safe resistance value to use that won't mess things up too bad.
2) Some cartridge manufacturers are just as in the dark on this topic as many phono preamp designers are.


All I can say is look at the math folks. If you have to use loading you're dealing with a compromise.

^^ Good. The highest load you can run without problems is the best load.

Loading is entirely for the benefit of the preamp not the cartridge. Here's how it works:
The cartridge is an inductor. The tone arm cable has a capacitance. Since they are in parallel, the result is a tuned resonant circuit, often active at +100KHz frequencies or even into the MHz range.
If your preamp isn't happy with radio frequency energy coming in (and that is what I'm talking about) then the loading is used to detune the resonance and thus kill the RFI (Radio Frequency Interference).

It is therefore non-critical- a low enough resistance value is all that's needed if your preamp can't handle RFI (and if it has a switch for loading on the front panel then that is the case).

I would try it without any loading and see how it sounds though! The load causes the cartridge to do more work and thus makes the cantilever more stiff and less able to trace higher frequencies.