Optimal loading for the Orpheus

I don't see why (and apparently neither does Mr. Yoshioka) with today's very powerful magnets that there's any advantage to making a lo-output MC cartridge (meaning anything less than .4 mV.)

When magnets were weaker and you needed more coil windings (than you do today) to produce output, settling for really lo-output in order to reduce coil weight and increase transient response made some sense. But even then, there were trade-offs. Hi-gain phono preamps and/or step-up transformers were needed to boost the weak signal; and both of those devices defeated the benefit of the lighter coil assembly's better transients, to some degree.

It didn't surprise me, therefore, that with the introduction of the Orpheus, Yoshioka-san has abandoned the very lo-output model. Why bother? With the coil literally immersed in a "bath" of magnetic flux provided by the ring magnet design, a coil that produces .4mV (actually .65 mV using the CBS standard) won't need as many windings as in times past!

To answer Tim's question, I don't recall reading any direct comparisons of the Temper V vs. W with all else being equal. I would guess any perceived difference would be due more to having to drive the phono preamp harder with the V in order to match the volume to the W ;-)
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Hickory, the thing is that if you are looking for a load anywhere from 0 ohms to say 2000 ohms, you can do fine by just inserting a loading resistor of the desired value -- since having a 47,000 ohm resistor in parallel with it won't reduce its value by any significant amount, as your calculation illustrates. BTW, the formula you give only works for 2 resistors in parallel -- there is a more general formula for multiple resistors in parallel.

I have often stated that a good place to start loading a given cartridge (getting into the ballpark) is to multiply 25x the cartridge's internal resistance/impedance. The optimum will vary, but not more than +/- 50% of the 25 multiple. Raul and I agree that the best procedure for discovering the optimum load is to listen to the bass while starting at the low end of the loading range and working up to higher resistances. If you do it this way, the bass will go from looser to tighter and then as you go too high (in load) the bass will begin to weaken (thin out and lose strength) the mid/high won't change (except in relative terms, to the bass) that much throughout the procedure.

If the load exceeds a cartridge's optimum by even a small amount (say running a cartridge at 800 ohms where it should be optimum around 100 +/- ohms) it will be hard to detect because it will sound pretty much the same (bright) from 800 all the way up to 47,000!