Help with cartridge loading. . .

Again, the two ubiquitous schools of thought in present day audio rear their head. I would say that you should go with what the manufacturer of the cartridge suggests, which, I guess, tips my hand. From your question it certainly appears to me that you are of the aesthetics first credo. If my assumption is right, you will have to wait for like-minded people to reply to your question, but, in the final analysis, you will not be able to avoid experimentation. Think about it another way, if preamps still had tone controls, and if you had the type of tone controls providing various curves in the response, how many different settings do you think you could conjure up? How many would you, intuitively, reject out of hand? The situation is somewhat analogous. Don't freak yourself out with the theoretical possibilities. Good luck.

I don't know, but it was refreshing to read the manual (if you can call it that) that comes with the Rega P9. It seems the designer takes a simpler view of things as they pertain to playing a black disc. I guess everybody is right! My feelings are that unit to unit variability obviously exists, but is probably over hyped. I guess I just don't have that tweaker fibre! I like the notion that vinyl records don't require cleaning since the stylus will simply shove away the dirt in its path. I will soon see how much shovelling of dirt the P9 can actually accomplish. As for me, I will set it to whatever the cart manufacturer recommends and pray for a mild winter.