Technics SL-1200 phono cable capacitance

[twotone]

Just looking for something there on how to measure the capacitance of tonearm cable and came across this below.

Apologies if this is old news

Tony

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=329723

[Bacek]

An old one but maybe someone will need this info. Lately I was planting new IC's. Mesured arm wire only and it was 10pF. With my new IC full capitance I have is 49pF. Pretty low but it was not easy to solider such tick wire (isolation) and it's only 70 cm long (short in this case).

[Lynster]

Yes it's old news in one sense, the high capacitance cables on new decks manufactured around 2009 on was discovered a year or so later, but I agree with Bacek that not everyone with a late build deck may have heard of this as yet.

I bought my SL1210 new in 2010 and had an electronics competent friend check my deck with his digital capacitance meter and sure enough I had the high capacitance internal cabling fitted. We measured about 350pF including tonearm cable (measure with headshell removed) and that didn't include the phono stage and ICs.

I remember that Kevin (KAB) in his email reply to my request for a replacement noted that he was in the process of discussing all this with HQ in Osaka at the time and had late build Dec 2008 models in stock that were still fitted with the low capacitance early cable, hence the 2009 guesstimate. He supplied me with a M5G cable and PCB that apparently had a capacitance of 93pF. Once fitted and including tone arm wire (my friend rechecked) was somewhere about the 120pF from memory. I know that when I did the numbers at the time, total capacitance including my IC's and the 120pF of my phono stage was now in the order of 250/260pF rather than the previous 500 or so pF. Could make a very big (negative) difference with some MMs if owners unknowingly had the bad cables.