my advice is to forget those silly specs.....they don't matter at all. If your cartridge was professionally installed just listen to some music and enjoy. If you installed the cart yourself, double check the alignment, put on some music and enjoy.
Wrapping my head around MC carts. HELP!!!
So, I recently took a head first dive into rebuilding my hi-fi system, and have been quite pleased with the results. I picked up a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Espirit with the Ortofon 2m Blue cart, a Vincent Pho 700 pre, and a Jolida JD301BRC. So far, haven't been disappointed. But I've been bitten by the bug by all of this, and have been researching and trying to understand cartridge compatibility, in terms of compliance with the tone arm, and the output matching with my preamp. Specifically with MC carts. It seems to be going over my head. All I've been able to figure out is that the tonearm on this deck is 6g, and the input impedance of my preamp is 100 ohm, on the MC setting.
Was hoping to maybe get some elaboration on how this effects what I'd be able to use with good results in my set up, or recommendations in the <$600 range that would suit this setup. I've found online resources, but still ended up with more questions than I went in with! Thanks in advance!
Was hoping to maybe get some elaboration on how this effects what I'd be able to use with good results in my set up, or recommendations in the <$600 range that would suit this setup. I've found online resources, but still ended up with more questions than I went in with! Thanks in advance!
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I’ll try to remove some of the mystery. There are two types of MC cartridges - high output that are designed to work with MM phono stages and low output MC’s. HOMC’s require the same loading as MM’s, 47K ohms, and since they average around 2.5mV, they work well at MM gain settings of 40dB. The input capacitance is usually around 100pF too. Again, settings that are the same as a MM. LOMC is a whole different animal. Their output is averages around 0.5mV and gain settings should be around 60dB if the phono stage is designed for LOMC’s. The input loading drops to around 100 ohms and input capacitance is irrelevant. Your Vincent Pho 700 is both a MM and LOMC phono stage so you would be in business. But a word of caution - the phono stage becomes critical with LOMC’s because at the higher gain levels needed, around 60dB, some MC stages are noisy (audible hiss). And if you can hear this from your listening position, it will be annoying. You want to use a phono stage with a high s/n ratio in MC mode that will be graveyard quiet. Less noise equals more music. Finally a word about cartridge compliance. Use the dynamic compliance rating @ 10Hz when determining the resonant frequency of the cartridge/tonearm combo. You already know the effective mass of your tonearm, 6 grams, so that’s good. Here is a tool to use to determine compatibility... https://www.vinylengine.com/cartridge_resonance_evaluator.php Just look for the cartridges dynamic compliance rating along with its actual weight (add a 0.5 grams for mounting hardware) and see where the combo falls. Hopefully in the green. Hope some of this helps. |
Having had both, I wouldn't say that tonality differs that much. There are very musical MM and HOMC's out there that offers superb tonality. But I have found that LOMC's are much more accurate with the ability to extract more musical detail due to their faster transient response. And they are also more dynamic which is a biggie for me. These are characteristics that I feel are important in a cartridge so I probably won't back to an HOMC anytime soon. |