Phil Allison wrote:

"Serge Auckland"


The Shure V15II and III have a little brass tag which links the can to the
left ground connection. If the arm has a metal headshell and continuity to
the arm ground wire, then the tag can (should?) be removed. Without the
tag, the cartridge is then balanced.

** Nonsense - with no earth link, the two coils become merely "floating".

I don't know about other makes of cartridge,
they could well have the can bonded to one pin, in which case they would
then be unbalanced, or rely on the headshell, in which case they would be
balanced. MC cartridges, which don't have any screening usually, would be
balanced devices.

** The correct term is " floating ".

Balancing infers differential mode amplification, twisted pair cables etc,
etc.

..... Phil

Phil,

Your'e right.

One might make use of a floating winding to give a balanced input
source,
if you have say 22k + 22k resistors at the amp to terminate the MM cart
winding.
The R join of the R taken to 0V,
and the two oppositely phased signals at the live ends of the R are
taken to
a pair of amp inputs, with the amp operating as a differential pair.

Noise and hum isn't always reduced if this way is used to connect an MM
cart to an amp......

Patrick Turner.