Can you run the HANA SL MC at 100 ohms?

I do confess I like it loud or to sound like the musicians are in the room. This is mostly small group jazz with or without vocals. I only own a Radio Shack db meter, but it tells me I listen at 85-90db. Measured at my listening position. I know folks who measure their SPLs at much higher levels. it really depends upon how you are making your measurements. Perhaps you own more sophisticated measuring devices than mine. That would not be hard. It’s just my wife and me in a big suburban house, so ambient noise is very low.

60-70db? With headphones, maybe I could hear the music at that SPL.  From a speaker, that is barely above ambient noise. Anyway, carry on. You're fine.

No you cannot hurt anything with the “wrong” phono load resistance, and whoever wrote that bit of advice about never using 47K to load an MC cartridge is full of crap. It has been mentioned before on this thread, but in case you hadn’t read it, you can make a stronger case that 100 ohms is the wrong load for a Hana cartridge with an internal resistance of 40 ohms. The rule of thumb says you should load that cartridge with 400 ohms or higher resistance. But it still isn’t wrong to try 100 ohms. If you like it just recognize that by loading that cartridge with 100 ohms, you are likely to be rolling off the high frequencies, possibly within the audible range. Plus, you are losing some of the gain of the cartridge.

Glad it worked out well.

This is for Brad1138.  So sorry if I confused you.  I did suggest you might want to try the 47K ohm loading, but I also said "if your phono stage permits it", which was to say if your phono stage can provide sufficient gain absent a SUT.  I should have realized that you were probably using a SUT with a 1:10 step-up ratio, in order to achieve the 470 ohm loading that pleased you.  A 1:10 SUT into a 47K ohm resistance (across the secondaries of the SUT) will give the cartridge a load of 470 ohms.  So, you are correct to have questioned my advice; most likely your phono stage requires a SUT in order to provide enough total gain for the Hana.  One advantage of "high gain" phono stages is the ability to do without a SUT, and in that case you are freer to load the cartridge as you see fit.

Now try 47K, if your phono stage permits it.

big-greg, Just so some other neophyte doesn’t go off on the wrong track, are you adding 185 ohms of resistance to spritofaudio’s statement that he sees 515 ohms at the inputs of his 834P, in order to get to 700 ohms? If so, that’s WAY wrong. No phono cable (typically less than 2 meters in length) is going to exhibit more than a few ohms resistance, usually less. Perhaps you are confusing resistance with capacitance. Cable capacitance does have to be added in with input capacitance in order to calculate the load capacitance, and a pair of ICs could add as much as 50 to 150pF, but for an MC cartridge like the Hana SL, that is not such a big deal. But resistance of a phono cable is usually irrelevant because it’s quite low.

Spiritofaudio, Doesn’t the 834P use a built-in SUT in order to achieve gain sufficient for an LOMC cartridge? If so, you cannot determine load impedance without knowing the turns ratio of the SUT, but maybe I am wrong; the 834P might have an active gain sufficient to deal with an LOMC without a SUT.
And finally, you guys might look back at the first several responses to this post. Typically, you want the input load resistance to be about 10X the internal resistance of the cartridge. Since the Hana SL has a 30 ohm input resistance, theory suggests it should be loaded with at least 300 ohms. Of course, you can go much higher, as well. And if you go lower, nothing explodes; but lower load resistances will tend to roll off the highs and eventually to sink some gain to ground, which means the cartridge will start to waste signal voltage.
chili555, The most likely reason that your Hana sounded poor when you removed the SUT was not due to load but due to insufficient gain into an MM input.  Maybe that's what you meant.

Chili, I think you are underestimating the technical expertise of the designer at DB Systems.  The kits are meant to be used in conjunction with a phono stage that has a fixed input resistance of 47K ohms.  For other fixed input resistances, I suppose they can provide custom values, but as you intimate, the final net resistance of two or more resistors in parallel can never be higher than that of the lowest value resistor in the parallel grouping.  Most audiophiles know this, let alone all EEs.  I don't think it's "widely believed" that resistances in parallel are additive.

By the way, SUTs cannot have a "fixed" input impedance.  Transformers do not per se have an impedance.  The device on the primary side sees an impedance equal to that of the device on the secondary side divided by the turns ratio of the transformer.  I guess you know all this, but your post makes me wonder what load you are presenting to your Hana.  For the Hana to "see" a load of 100 ohms, using a SUT with a 1:10 turns ratio, the resistance on the secondary side must be 10,000 ohms.  Is that the case?  If the turns ratio is other than 1:10, then take the square of that turns ratio and multiply it by 100 ohms to find the value of the resistor on the secondary side, at the input of the phono stage, which would give a 100-ohm load to the Hana.
On paper, 100 ohms should not be optimal for the Hana SL, with its internal resistance of 30 ohms, but you like what you like.

I think the op means he is using a SUT with 1:10 ratio and 47k on the secondary, which means cartridge sees 470 ohms.

The 100-ohm load will not sound "bad" with these cartridges, either the SL or the EL, but the SQ will be colored to a degree by the effect of the load resistance on the HF response and on total gain. It’s OK to like it that way. Lots of guys load down the Denon DL103, which has a similarly high internal resistance, even below 100 ohms, and claim to love it.

But it should be a simple matter for any competent tech to open up the chassis of a phono stage and replace the phono load resistor with a more appropriate value. I would suggest 1K ohm and forgeddaboudit. If the LOMC gain is being generated via an SUT, then one trick would be to increase the value of the load resistor that is across the secondaries of the SUT, to a value that results in the desired higher impedance being seen at the primaries. For that, the tech would need to obtain information about the turns ratio of the SUT, as well, from the maker of the phono stage.

As mulveling says, you will lose some output signal voltage at 100 ohms load, but also you will lose some extreme high frequency response.  The cartridge may sound a bit dull and rolled off with that load and a source impedance of 30 ohms, besides the penalty in over all gain.  However, it should be no big deal to change the load resistance afforded by your phono input, unless it uses an SUT to boost gain, in which case it gets a bit more complicated, but still not un-fixable.

 What is the internal resistance or source impedance of the Hana SL?