It's 515 ohms in the MC position......
.......a decision made by the designer in order to tame high frequency resonances in MC carts. Unfortunately I discovered it really compromises the performance of the Koetsu and Linn cartridges that I use.
I mainly use a Koetsu Black, which like all the Koetsus performs best seeing 10 ohms. The transformer boosts the signal by 10 and decreases the impedence by the same ratio, so I installed high quality 100 ohm Rikken resistors. The result compared to the stock resistors producing 515 ohms was a much tighter bass, a less recessed midrange and a much smoother and melodic top end.
Unfortunately this isn't something you can change with the flick of a switch. I had to unsolder the existing resistors and replace them. At the same time I replaced six of the stock capacitors with massive Hovland Musicaps.
The design of the EAR has so much potential, but it's built to a price point. You can make it a cost-no-object design and unleash the true potential of this phonostage by replacing the stock components with high-quality alternatives.
You can go as far as your wallet will allow. You can replace every resistor and capacitor in the EAR virtually creating a new phonostage with the same schematic. Do a search on this website and Audio Asylum to see what Thorsten, a British user has done to his 834P. It bears little resemblance to the original.
But even my small mods have increased the performance radically. I have also replaced the stock Russian tubes with
vintage Telefunken tubes. A huge improvement right there.
So if you are handy with a soldering iron do your own mods. If not, do as the previous poster suggested and contact Mitch at EAR USA. He will happily hot rod your EAR at a reasonable price.
Have fun,
Mark
.......a decision made by the designer in order to tame high frequency resonances in MC carts. Unfortunately I discovered it really compromises the performance of the Koetsu and Linn cartridges that I use.
I mainly use a Koetsu Black, which like all the Koetsus performs best seeing 10 ohms. The transformer boosts the signal by 10 and decreases the impedence by the same ratio, so I installed high quality 100 ohm Rikken resistors. The result compared to the stock resistors producing 515 ohms was a much tighter bass, a less recessed midrange and a much smoother and melodic top end.
Unfortunately this isn't something you can change with the flick of a switch. I had to unsolder the existing resistors and replace them. At the same time I replaced six of the stock capacitors with massive Hovland Musicaps.
The design of the EAR has so much potential, but it's built to a price point. You can make it a cost-no-object design and unleash the true potential of this phonostage by replacing the stock components with high-quality alternatives.
You can go as far as your wallet will allow. You can replace every resistor and capacitor in the EAR virtually creating a new phonostage with the same schematic. Do a search on this website and Audio Asylum to see what Thorsten, a British user has done to his 834P. It bears little resemblance to the original.
But even my small mods have increased the performance radically. I have also replaced the stock Russian tubes with
vintage Telefunken tubes. A huge improvement right there.
So if you are handy with a soldering iron do your own mods. If not, do as the previous poster suggested and contact Mitch at EAR USA. He will happily hot rod your EAR at a reasonable price.
Have fun,
Mark