Does anyone else here has a Benz Gullwing (or LPS = same generator) wich does not react to input impendance?
I's on a Clearaudio Ovation with TT5 arm. My phono stage is a Graham Slee Reflex C in wich I just soldered 47kOhms resistors when I got the cart, before was 1kOhms.
Now I ripped some tracks to my computer to see if 100, 1k, 22k or 47k sounds better using a Y-connector with resistor. And there is not the tiniest difference in sound at all. Plus the three tracks even have the same volume level. I'm not used to that because all the MC cartridges I heard before sounded (more or less) brighter and the level dropped a little bit when I raised the loading.
Is there something wrong here?
@tealow Not at all! In fact this is good. The reason to use a loading resistor isn't for the sake of the cartridge, which does not 'ring' at audio frequencies, its for the phono section.
This is because the inductance of the cartridge is very low and also has a high 'Q' value, and its in parallel with the capacitance of the tonearm cable. Together they form a very peaky resonance at a very high Radio Frequency (RF, possibly above 1MHz) and when this peak is energized, it creates RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) that is injected directly into the phono section.
If the phono section doesn't like that, it won't sound right and so loading resistors are used to detune (make less peaky) the resonance, thus removing the RFI.
If the phono section does not care about RFI then you won't hear a difference until you get the loading so low that the output of the cartridge actually goes down.
In short, you're in a good spot so no worries!
47K is the industry standard loading and if the phono section is properly designed this will work fine with all low output moving coil cartridges. If you have to apply loading to get the 'right sound' the phono section has a design issue.