Originally Posted by
petrat
Something else to consider. I think that it's important to be able to easily alter the gain and loading on a phonostage, as, inevitably, you'll end up with different cartridges and amplifiers/speakers in the future. Phonostages that have a single 'set' gain and loading shouldn't be considered imo.
I completely disagree and for the same reasons as Andrew gave.
MM's have a standard 47K resistive loading requirement, only capacitance may need changing and even then 100-200pF will suit 90% of carts. With MC carts the importance of correct resistive loading is exaggerated and they don't require any capacitive loading.
Gain: Most MM's are around 5mV output so one gain setting will suffice for 90% of the MM's ever made. MC's have a wider range of output's but in this case noise is likely to be the biggest issue with really low output MC's. The vast majority of MC's will be in the range 0.3mV - 0.6mV and this agsin is easily handles by one gain setting.
For what it's worth the Arkless 640P has infinitely adjustable loading for MM and MC by use of loading plugs and gain can be changed within certain limits by pre arranging with me to build for a certain gain. I would discourage this though for the reasons given above. It's quiet enough and has enough gain as is for me to use one with my Technics EPC-300MC cart with only 0.1mV output...
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