Counterpoint 5000 owners....

this description might answer your question....?
Also: with the SA-1000 to get mc phono you inserted a jumper to enable the first FET gain stage, and the second tube stage was the same as the MM stage.
I do not know whether the SA-5000 can switch between the two on the front panel.

Tried the Altavista site but the pictures were to small and the description was't detailed enough.
Chazzbo

You might want to go ahead and give Mike Elliot a call. He answers the phone himself and is happy to talk shop with people like us. Have had a good experience with him when asking about his amplifiers.

Found out that there are two inputs one MM and one MC on back but you need to pop the top to flip switch which might be a drag convenience wise but is sonnically sound (many of Elliot's mods are to remove or bypass existing circuts for better sonics).But the MC has three gain settings and three designated impedance values and one that can be user set.I assume that user set one could be used with HO MM (though I might be wrong).Still that felxibilty appealed to me and I dove.Tell you what happens when I light it up.
Cheers
Chazz

Hi all,

The SA-5000 has two sets of input jacks for phono: one MM and one MC. The MM inputs are suitable for cartridges with outputs of about 1mV and up, and which like a 47k load. The MC input is for cartridges with outputs lower than 1mV, and offer front-panel switchable loads of 47k, 1k, 300 and 100 ohms, with a "user" position that loads the cartridge with whatever resistor you install in the preamp. The preamp was not intended to support two tonearms at the same time: you have to decide ahead of time, plugging your tonearm into the appropriate input and setting two internal switches to the "MC" or "MM" position, depending on which input you're feeding signal into. The internal switches select betwen the two inputs and configure the first stage of the phono stage into either a common-cathode triode voltage gain stage of about 24dB (MM), or a JFET/triode cascode with a gain of about 46dB (MC).

Hope this helps.

Michael Elliott
Alta Vista Audio LLC
www.altavistaaudio.com