What happens when?

You'll need to turn the volume on your preamp all the way up, and then go sit right in front of your speakers wearing a hearing aid . . . . . . .

That's too funny .......:))

Most MM inputs provide a 47K ohm load. MC cartridges usually need far lower load impedances, in the 100 - 2000 ohm range. In additin to insufficient gain you'll get response anaolies due to load mismatch.

Having said that, many high output MC cartridges are designed to work with a standard 47K MM input and will not have a problem with gain or impedance match.

My 91 yr. old Dad has an hearing aid I can borrow, he never uses them................. Now I was looking at a Mcintosh with a phono section (C41) it would match my MC352............ right now I'm using a Monolithic phono pre (PS-1) my cartridge is the Blue Point special evo 3........ it has the 47k load and 2.5 output which might work with the Mcintosh. Maybe a little on the weak side? Thanks for the responses everyone.

Your Evo 3 is a high output moving coil cartridge and it's basically designed to work with moving magnet phonostages that are built into a lot of good preamps like the C41. It won't be weak, it'll be just right.

The real question is what happens when you use a highout put MM with a phono stage set up for real low output MCs. I guess you sit there with a catchers mitt grabbing pieces of speaker cones and motors or leave the attenuator on max defeat, and listen for cross talk, selecting your tuner source even if you don't own a tuner.

Nsgarch thanks for the good news on the matching of components....... if the phono section sounds better in the Mcintosh I'll save on shelf space too.

If you do get the C41 and your phono sounds good (loud enough with the preamp's volume control around 12 o'clock) you might still find the sound a little hard or glarey, with insufficient bass. If you do, it means the default 47Kohm input load of the Mac's phono section is too high for the EVO and needs to be reduced by adding parallel resistors to the phonostage inputs. A good rule of thumb for the right value resistor (first try anyway) is 25 times the coil resistance of the cartridge. I tried to find the spec for your cart on www.cartridgedb.com but they don't show it. Maybe it's on the spec sheet that came with your cartridge.