Does Everyone Use 2 Phono Cables with SUT

Well thanks OP for a very helpful thread. I’ve had an A23 Hommage T2 for several years now but I’ve always found it underwhelming. However I was using it with .5 meter A23 interconnects (and a Kuzma 4 point on the inputs). I had the intuition that the A23 ICs were over-damping the signal but I never got better results with other cables (all of them ‘interconnects’ too).

So I got re-inspired by this thread. As it happens there was a used pair of Kimber TAK cu phono cables available at a reputable shop near me. Apparently they have a capacitance of 47.1 pF in the 1m length - the ones I bought are 2 ft long. I swapped them in for the A23 ICs and sure enough I found a significant and positive improvement. Everything opened up, top to bottom, and now the T2 finally makes sense to me. I’m using it with a newly rebuilt EMT JSD 6 cart and will swap in a new Zu Audio/Denon 103 shortly. Very nice to get the value out of the T2 after all that time.

This is particularly important when you get into the higher impedance cartridges through high ratio SUT’s

Dave @intactaudio, thanks for this explanation. So my takeaway is that the higher capacitance of standard interconnects makes them problematic for use between a SUT and phono stage, especially if they’re not short and especially if you’re using a higher impedance cart and high ratio SUT. That would explain why I had a problem using the Denon 103 and EMT JSD 6 with an A23 T2 SUT with standard ICs of various brands and why I’ve gotten such a big change from switching to a phono cable that’s advertised for its low capacitance. Nice to have such a clear narrative on this!