Cartridge loading - does it matter?
Rega Planar 3 turntable, (new) RB-300 arm and Denon 103s cartridge.
"Nick Gorham" wrote in message
...
Dish Guy wrote:
Does it matter? Probably not.
I use a Denon 103s MC cartridge (0.385mV) and after several months of
testing/listening recently I finally settled on 47K ohms as its best
termination resistance.
I tried several values, 40, 100, 200, 1000, 2000 ohms and 47K ohms. The
lower values displayed a slight resonance in the upper bass, about 1 dB
or so somewhere around the 80-100 Hz I would estimate, just enough to
skew the frequency balance for the male voice. The 1000 and 2000 ohm
values smoothes this low freq rise but then produced a peak in the 6 KHz
to 8 KHz region. The 47K resistance offers the smoothest and most
extended frequency response with neither of these two peaks being
audible.
I only tried the 47K loading out of frustration with the lower settings.
All seemed to introduce something not quite right. I must admit that I
was surprised that 47K loading sounded as good as it did -- and better
than all lower impedances as well. As an added bonus (I guess) the S/N
ratio is higher with the higher loading.
Out of interest, what arm are you using? The 103 is better matched to
higher mass arms, being a lot lower compliance than most of todays
cartridges. It often gives better results with extra mass being added at
the headshell (6gm or so).
This may have contributed more the the bass problem than the loading.
--
Nick
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