You can run cart. balanced into phono pre with RCAs if cables and input jacks are wired that way. That is the way I run mine. XLR jacks are too big to fit through my arm mounting hole (OL arms use Rega mount with hard wired cables). In my case using XLRs would require unsoldering them every time I needed to pull the arm. :~( No real penalty to using RCAs wired balanced IMO. The shield can be grounded at the turntable which is then grounded with the TT ground wire.
How to accomodate a balanced only phono stage ?
I've got my eye on an expensive Phono stage that only accepts balanced inputs - from my experience about 99.9% of the tables out there are single ended only. Is there a cost effective way to convert an single ended turntable to supply a balanced input of a phono stage (without compromising the signal)? thanks for any input.