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Clearaudio Insider Wood output question???

Evening all,

I have a couple of questions about the Clearaudio Insider Wood Reference Cartridge, but first - the background...

This weekend I visited a friend who has relatively recently purchased a Clearaudio Insider Wood cartridge, and a very pricey Clearaudio table. A couple of us spent the day Sunday troubleshooting some noise and setup issues, and the output of the cartridge seemed a little bit low. The cartridge is rated for an output of .6 mV, and it seemed to us that a cartridge that we compared rated at .35 mV sounded several dB louder at given volume levels on the preamp.

At this point, I have to say that the Clearaudio cartridge sounded like it was working well enough - no distortion or unbalance, good tracking, very musical, etc, in other words it sounded right, just not as loud as it should be given the spec sheet. The cartridge loading was 100 ohms.

Is there a chance that this cartridge is flawed, and is there any certain way to test it? Does anyone know of any reason to think the the output of the cartridge is over-rated? If it was your cartridge would YOU be concerned? Is there anything I'm not thinking about that could be an issue?

As always, your helpful input is greatly appreciated,

George
esoxhntr
esoxhntr OP
196 posts
 
Yeah, the next thing we are going to try is adjusting the cartridge loading. However, having played with loading once or twice (literally :) my experience is that there is far more of a gain to be had in terms of sound quality than in terms of pure volume - am I mistaken?

The next loading values we are going to try will be 500 and 1000 ohms.
gregm
3,399 posts
 
Esoxhntr
more of a gain to be had in terms of sound quality than in terms of pure volume
In this case,the loading suggestions aim at exploring possible losses in the cartridge -> phono input interface.
As you note, the sound quality is satisfactory.

Comparing to the Dynavector, and all other things being equal, the Clear should be giving you s/thing like +3dB in "volume".
esoxhntr OP
196 posts
 
Greg,

That's what we figured too...
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