How much fine tuning required on cartridge loading

If you're using stepup transformers, input impedance becomes very critical for MC's. Active gain stages make it useful (as Hagtech described) but not quite as critical.

Still, I would never be without some way of adjusting impedance for MC use. Every MC is designed to operate into a certain load. It will not provide even frequency response if it sees a very different load.

There are ways to alter impedance if the phono pre doesn't include an adjustment. IMO the ideal setup is internal resistor sockets. That way you can fine tune before soldering in, but other methods are also effective.

Capacitance is not a critical adjustment for MC's, especially LOMC's. It can matter for many MM's. Unless you're planning on using many MM cartridges, capacitance adjustment is not a feature that should affect your phono stage choice.

To those experimenting with different resistor types, we tried seven or eight on our BentAudio Mu stepups.

In our system, to our ears, Vishays and all other film resistors had one audible flaw. Because of their high surface area:volume ratio, very high frequencies were largely uncontrolled. Even went we took resistor values low enough to audibly attenuate middle highs and upper mids, true high frequency response remained excessive.

We preferred carbon resistors, like Kiwame's, for their even and balanced effect at all frequencies. YMMV of course.

Snake64,

My apologies! I meant to recommend the Riken Ohms.

We used the cheaper Kiwame's to hone in on optimal values, then bought Rikens (and others) to hone in on resistor type/brand.

The Rikens were definitely the ultimate winners, for us. Sorry for the mis-info, shouldn't have posted from memory about a year-ago experiment.

Doug