Top resistors

I built my Hagerman step up using basic bulk Vishays. There are only 2 resistor locations directly in the signal path. With the basic Vishays the sound was good, but not as transparent as I had hoped. I tried the (very expensive) nude Vishays in those 2 locations and things opened up dramatically. Maybe too much.

I then put a Riken Ohm into the second location, leaving the nude Vishay in the first, and it warmed things up nicely without losing that transparency.

As it turned out my cartridge loads as 220 ohms, which was the value of that second nude Vishay that I replaced with the Riken. So I replaced that loading resistor with the nude Vishay and got another leap in transparency, even though it was not directly in the signal chain.

So I have found that resistors do in fact play a role to tune the sound in a sensitive circuit. I have also found that those white paddle Caddocks are very nice, though also very expensive. Used judiciously for tuning these can be a great improvement, but they are far too expensive to use everywhere.

There is always a way to balance things out. I tried some of the nude Vishay's in my phono stage and found them to be incredibly transparent. However, I did wind up removing one and replacing it with a Carbon type that makes things more musical to my ear. The combo is perfect to me, where just using one in both locations was too much of a good thing one way or another.

Voicing!

If you want a little warmth added to that transparency you could add a Riken Ohm in series, following the Vishay. Of course you would have to use different values to sum to the value you want.

I did something similar in my Hagerman step up. There are 2 resistors in the signal path. The first one I use the naked Vishay, but using that in both spots was just too revealing. Adding the Riken Ohm carbon to the second spot was (as the baby bear says) just right. I then used the leftover Vishay for cartridge loading, with another improvement.