Ceramic cartridge phono stage options?

In the Link, I have been demo’d Audioflyer’s System for a decent period of time.

Use Audioflyer's info from Page 1 and throughout the Thread to get the direction that should be the most useful.

 Philips GP390 Ceramic cartridge NOS 1970s - Page 7

The Modified Cart’ he had produced was captivating in use, and was enough to compel myself to buy the same model with a Spare Stylus.

I will be having this modified, by adding a Boron Cantilever and the modifiers own form for a Stylus. Conflict has stopped the Service wanted to be used being Posted to.

The same individual is also to receive a Cadenza Black to have my design for it be realized, hence the Cantilever can be the Donor for the Ceramic Model. 

A version of the mod’ for the CB’ has been done near Covid Times and the new user of the CB’s has been very very impressed using a recollective comparison to the older and original design.

My own take is that a returned thoroughly cleaned Cart’ after a 500ish hour usage period, will substantially impress from a recollective comparison to the used sent Cart’.

Works undertaken change the voicing, the Gamble being the Voicing Change, may not be to the users taste!!!

To date for myself, I have enjoyed the new voicing much much more that the original Cart’, as I have spare donor models, I don’t have to recollect to gather the info that enables such a statement. 

Elliott:

No one here (that I can tell) is recommending plugging a KAB CERMAG into a line level input.

The OP's friend can however run the ceramic directly to the line level input of his tube/Nagra preamp and give it a whirl.

Ceramics are also said to be compatible with the line inputs of some FET based preamps, but I'm not very familiar with them.

DeKay

I think the easiest way is to just acquire an integrated amp from the late 50s that contains a phono stage. For example, the Harmon Kardon A440 Trio is an excellent amp with a damned good (for a crystal/ceramic) phono section. On the plus side, you get tubes. EL84 in the case of the A440 Trio. On the down side, you get another amp. Or is that another plus?

No one has defined the terms high vs low input impedance. In fact the early ceramics are said to work best into impedances >1Megohm. Tube linestages typically present an input impedance of 100K ohms or even less. I read elsewhere that input impedance has a bearing on the need for RIAA correction. Suffice to say this is a complex topic and the best approach seems to have been different for different ceramic cartridges.

Also, I forgot to add, apparently some ceramic cartridges were built with internal RIAA correction in the form of a capacitor that induces a reverse RIAA curve at the output.  This is an inexact copy of RIAA, because it would not recreate the plateau seen in the RIAA curve, between 500Hz and (whatever the upper pole is and I am too lazy to look it up but around 2.2kHz). When you vary input Z with that fixed capacitance, that of course will alter the RIAA correction effected by the capacitor and make it even more inaccurate, if the load impedance is very different from the design goal.  All the more reason to find out about the provenance of any ceramic cartridge before use.  So there is no one size fits all solution for how to run a ceramic cartridge with modern equipment.