What is the typical resistance across the various terminals of a MC phono cartridge?


...And I think I know the answer but am just looking for confirmation. Has my cartridge gone (or arrived) bad?
There seems to be no resistance across the positives in fact anywhere across all four terminals.
It plays nicely but there's a bit more background than I'd like.


thatspeck
@almarg that seems a high current level, I was drawing on the specs as posted here ... of course we both agree it’s not something you should do. Am I stupid to presume that applying current at these levels to an MC would actually cause the cantilever to deflect (ie turning the generator into a motor?)
http://www.ni.com/tutorial/3981/en/
Hi Folkfreak,

Thanks for providing the reference on the National Instruments meter. At a list price of $2674 that of course is a very different animal than the meters most of us have, but the 0.95 ma of current it provides on its two lowest resistance scales is still far higher than the current a typical LOMC would normally generate and conduct.

And yes, I’d imagine that cantilever deflection in response to such an applied current might indeed be a problem.

Best regards,
-- Al
Thank you all for the responses.
I had been chasing the source of an annoying little hum and ended up back at the cartridge. Admittedly I'm nitpicking but even a tiny hum can be annoying. My multimeter is of the older analog scale type and generally I use it as yes or no when it comes to ohms. I noticed that the cartridge has an open circuit between ALL of the different terminals (really sounds great except between songs). As I had a nearly new dl-103 I measured that as well, completely different measurements, what I expected would be correct. Nothingness between the positives. Perhaps this humming cartridge is supposed to have an open circuit between the positives though this seems really unlikely as it's a dl-103r (rebuilt canti etc) so probably pretty similar. Regardless, it needs to be looked at.

Long story short (no pun intended), installing the stock 103 fixed the problem and seems to have sustained no damage from the abuse.

Thankfully these are relatively inexpensive cartridges but I will certainly refrain from such measurements in the future. 

Kind regards,
Mark
OP, you haven't the slightest clue in what you're doing. Please stop immediately and put the Ohm meter away. Your cartridge is fine.