Can someone explain "Moving Iron" vs."Moving Coil"

The Grado wood body cartridges are available in both high and low outputs (4.5 & .5 I think). Grado's phono pre which I assume was designed to match these cartridges has a choice of either 45 or 62db of gain. Your cartridge could be a low output model. Try both settings on your preamp and go with the one that sounds best.

Good info Bld. I didn't know that they offered two different output levels for their cartridges. 4.5 mv would be plenty for most any MM phono stage. The .5 versions could be used with MC inputs, but one might want to check the loading. Some MC stages use different loading characteristics than their MM counterparts.

For some reason, i was thinking that Grado's weren't as low as .5 but not as high as 4.5 mv output. Dropping somewhere in the middle there would put someone in a bind in terms of having "almost" enough gain on the MM stage while having too much output for an MC stage. Sean
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Should have done some research before my previous post. The current models have outputs of 5mv & .5mv, the gain on the phono amp is 40 or 56 db.

Dbamac: Don't forget to let us know how things turn out?

Dbamac: Never mind.