Getting The Most Out Of A Koetsu Urushi

First of all, I want to thank everyone who has chosen to participate in this thread. I appreciate all your comments and insights. Every single one of them has given me a bit of perspective, and things to think about.

I may be rehashing a few things, but this is worth mentioning. In the past, almost every cartridge I owned worked well on phono stages that were designed for LOMC, and with on board load settings. Now there was a bit of time where I owned a rebuilt Denon 103M, which had a wickedly low output due to its non ferrous magnet structure, something along the lines of .11 mV. Now the Liberty could not deal with that kind of low input voltage, so I ran a SUT with Cinemag transformers, wired at a 1:16 or 18 load as I recall. Don’t quote me on that though, working from memory. The Denon came alive with the SUT in the front end, while my other cartridges showed minimal or no improvement when compared to running off the MC settings of the phono stage. That is my only direct experience with a SUT/MC combo, as I always bought phono stages capable of running LOMC cartridges, and the cartridges I have owned always seem to be best suited for that kind of component. So my understanding of load relationship between SUT versus an active phono stage is sketchy at best. And there are proponents of SUT who feel this is always the best, and yet others who feel that the transformers are inferior to an active circuit. Like anything in audio, there is no consensus.

This thread is getting bogged down in loading, and that certainly is an important subject. But the larger scope of the question I am trying to get at consists of "Is the table/arm/phono stage I am using a good way to go about setting up a Urushi?" I try to keep my system down to two tables, as I only run one system. In the past I have owned tables from Well Tempered, Teres, Townshend, Galibier, VPI, Thorens, Garrard, and one or two others. After an extended bout with refurbished idlers, to my surprise I discovered that I like those big studio era direct drive tables. So I currently own a Denon DP 75 with VPI plinth, and Acos GST 801 arm. The other table being a Technics SP 10 MK II in a multi density custom plinth, and Riggle 12" String Theory arm. My feeling is that the Denon/Acos combo should be adequate for the Urushi. So these are my thoughts:

The Urushi goes on the Denon/Acos.

The Acos tone arm cable is a bit of an unknown as I am not first owner of the table, heck its from 1980ish. So the tone arm cable gets replaced with an Analysis Plus Silver Oval.

The question then becomes which phono stage to use. The choice would probably be the Liberty as it is the superior of the two versus the internal one in the NuVista. But with the load settings available of 100/220/330/500/47K am I better off running a SUT? At the very worst a SUT could be transferred to the MF phono stage and run into its MM configuration for the second table.

Of course one question that has to be asked is alignment/VTF/VTA, and how good my skills are. I set up all my cartridges, and have passable skills, and believe I do a respectable job. Also the question of this Urushi has to be asked. It came from a reputable seller, the cartridge was serviced by VDH and has his label. But is a VDH serviced Urushi really representative of what the cartridge should be?

Now my funds are somewhat limited, and I do the best I can with my audio gear. Perhaps I am past my level of associated equipment with this cartridge. Perhaps I cannot do it justice. If so I need to come to terms with that and decide what a course of action is. I currently own a ZYX 4D, Ortofon Winfeld, and Denon 304. The Denon was supposed to be my beater cartridge, but it sounds far better then it has any right to. So the question of what steps to take to get down the path of analog bliss and have a long term relationship with the Urushi is ultimately what I am inquiring about. Thanks again for taking the time to read this, and I appreciate everyone’s insights.

I think if you re-read the posts above, you will find answers to at least some of your questions. (You seem to have added a few in this last post.)  Now that you have made it more clear that you prefer to use the Liberty phono stage, I suggest you use it as is, if it has enough gain to suit the Urushi.  Any of the possible choices of load resistance you mention would work just fine with the Urushi.  I will repeat that the load resistance really does not make a huge difference with an LOMC cartridge, but I would agree there ARE very subtle differences, more important to some listeners than to others.  I also mentioned that I have taken to using 47K for all my LOMC cartridges; this is not a religion, and I am just as happy with 100 ohms, albeit that load now sounds a tiny bit closed in at the upper frequency extremes, compared to 47K.  I know for a fact that if you measured the frequency response of the cartridge with 100R vs 47K, up to 20kHz, you would see absolutely no difference, however.  I also suggested (politely I hope) that you might want to try plugging your tonearm cable into the MC phono inputs of your Liberty and try different load Rs to find out what you prefer.  I have no dog in the fight about SUT vs no SUT.  I believe one should do as one likes in that regard.  There are theoretical reasons on either side of the argument.  I only say that IF you choose to use a SUT (and you seem to want someone to tell you to do that), then be sure to plug into the MM (low phono gain) inputs of the Liberty, assuming it provides such inputs, and be sure to set the load R at the phono input to 47K ohms, no lower.  But be aware that the presence of a SUT in the signal path will reduce the net impedance "seen" by the cartridge, probably to below 500 ohms. (See my post above for the calculation in relation to the turns ratio of the SUT.)  At one point you stated that you want to achieve a load >500 ohms; using a SUT is exactly how not to do that.

Alignment you have to do for yourself.  Or if you feel incapable of doing it, ask a friend or a dealer to do it for you. By all accounts the Acos GST801 is a very fine tonearm, as good as or better than any you are likely to be able to buy new for anywhere under $2000.  But I do not know its effective mass.  Someone else may be able to help.

@lewm
Thank you for the response, it is appreciated. If the cartridge is minimally affected by loading, then there is very little to do to the system as far as getting it optimized. I can load it at 100K, 500K, and if memory serves there is a way to get to 47K on the Liberty. That would be interesting to do in order to make a 1 to 1 comparison against the internal stage of the MF NuVista.

As far as the Liberty goes, there is not a separate input for MM and MC, but rather internal jumpers that need to be made up to engage any particular setting. Not unlike a motherboard on a computer. Gain in MM is 44 dB, and in MC it is 64 dB. The history behind Liberty is that it is the factory direct offering of Peter Noerbeck of PBN Audio, and uses a more basic offering of his circuit that is found in his Olympia phono stages.

So, given the line of reasoning you put forth, my first step should be to change out the tone arm cabling on the Acos and see what the result is.

As far as effective mass of the GST 801, that is a number I have yet to come up with. I have the original owners manual and box for mine as I was able to source it NOS, and that information is not in there. Neither is it in Vinyl Engine, or any other site I can find. I do use the LP Gear Zupreme head shell with this cartridge, as it is 12 grams. The arm pipe is stainless steel, overall length is 337 mm, and there is an internal flexible tube for resonance control of the arm tube and shielding of the tone arm wire. The tone arm wire is silver. The GST 801 was the top offering from Acos, and given its time frame I would make the educated guess it is intended to be used with low compliance moving coils from the 80's era, which almost all of them had pretty stiff suspensions. 

Perhaps that is all that is required. If that does not provide the net results, then perhaps I am not a Koetsu kind of guy.

Raul, who is known for the MM thread here, owns an 801 and really likes it.  Perhaps he would be able to help with the specs.  But there is also no harm in just listening to the combination of 801 and Urushi. It's quite likely to be just fine.  Since the resonant frequency is inversely proportional to the square root of the product of effective mass X compliance, there is quite a bit of leeway in terms of what tonearms work with what cartridges to satisfy the equation.

Nandric,  It's worse than you say.  My MP1 was "tweaked" by me and now has more than 70db gain in the phono section alone.  And it's very quiet.  I historically used the Urushi with the MP1, but it was an earlier version of the MP1, still with its factory original circuit which made less gain, but still more than adequate gain for the Urushi.  So, running the Urushi into the hi-gain MP1 might be somewhat problematic. I haven't tried it lately.  I also own a Manley Steelhead, which feeds into my Beveridge speaker system.  I use it as a "full function" preamplifier, with no external linestage. I run my MM/MI cartridges into the MM inputs of the Steelhead and thence into the Beveridge amplifiers. The Steelhead can be well matched to the Urushi via its MC inputs. Right now, the Urushi is in its nice wooden box, at rest.  The ZYX Universe or the Ortofon MC2000 feeds the MP1.  Even with those cartridges, the volume control of the MP1 is barely up to 9 o'clock, where 6 o'clock is "off".  I use a stereo shunt type volume control on the MP1 which does not seem to affect the sonics, even when near to the rest stop.