Need advice: Hegel V10 phono stage and Sumiko Blue No.2


Hello, first post here, love the community.

I need a little help. 

Finally purchased an actual pre-amp for my turntable, and running into a snag. I have a Pro-Ject 2 Experience Classic turntable with a Sumiko Blue Point No.2 cartridge. This is a MC cartridge, but as I understand it, it's a "high output" cartridge and should be treated like a MM. 

I connected it to my Hegel V10 phono stage via the MM input but left the default DIP switch settings (for MM). Sounds great, but not as much gain as I would have expected. 

Does anyone have experience with this particular issue? Should I change the DIP switch settings for the V10 to match more of a MC cartridge (i.e., change the impedance , capacitance, or increase gain, etc)?

My local HiFi store guy didn't know. Any help would be immensely appreciated. Thank you!

 

Peder

 

Setup:

Hegel H190 amp

Hegel V10 phono stage

Pro-Ject 2 Experience Classic, Blue Point No.2 cartridge

Red River balanced XLR cables (b/w V10 and H190)

Vienna Acoustics Mozart Grand speakers

 

 

 

128x128denvercx

Thanks everyone, this is very helpful. Just learning here, and I appreciate the input! Will make those changes and update the post with the results. 

HI Denvercx, Keen to know the final setting you ended up with. Just received Hegel V10 and need to experiment too. Same cartridge - Blue Point 2. Thanks. 

JB - how did it go? I have been so busy (yes, I know), that I haven't experimented yet on this. Would love to know if you've done this already and have good results. Thanks!


Peder

 

OK, so I had setup this MC cartridge like a MM (plugged in the turntable RCAs to the MM V10 inputs and setup DIP switches as MM). I changed these errors, then used capacitance of 47pf. Sounds MUCH better. @jbfernando how did you set up yours? Thanks!

denvercx

First, check out the Hegel settings help page here: https://support.hegel.com/product-articles/v10-settings They put it together with tabs specifically to address stuff that wasn’t in the manual, which is a bunch. They get into the settings in more detail.

Second - make sure you’re not confusing 47k Ohm Impedance with 47pf Capacitance. If you’re using the MM setting, you’re already at 47k Ohm Impedance which is what your cart wants.

I’ve got a high output MC cart (Hana SH) with the same output mV as yours and am running the MM setting and inputs, with 10db of gain (44db with my Quattro Fil RCA’s, add 6db for your XLR’s) and have a 2.5mv cart like you have. It’s frigging glorious. I left the Imp and Cap settings as they had them for MM for now but will probably dabble a bit to determine if anything more can be gleaned.

The setup page does imply that MC settings are impactful even when running an MM cart... from there: "NOTE: When using MM cartridges, the MC impedance should be set to 100R to ensure optimal noise rejection. The MM input will always have a 47kOhm standard impedance."

Love the V10 so far and it’s still green - but very impressed with the midrange air and soundstage - love it!