I’m doubtful that a 0.4 mv cartridge would be suitable for use with your equipment. While as stated earlier the overall gain provided by the phono stage and the preamp would not in itself be an issue, several things suggest to me that unacceptable hiss and/or hum would be likely to result:
1)The phono stage’s specified hum and noise figure of 88 db below a 10 mv input corresponds to only 60 db below 0.4 mv, which seems marginal at best.
2)The 88 db figure may be based on psychoacoustic "weighting" techniques that are commonly used in deriving such figures, meaning that the unweighted performance may be worse.
3)The 52 db max gain spec of the phono stage is about 8 to 10 db less than the gains of most phono stages that are intended for use with cartridges having rated outputs in the vicinity of 0.4 mv.
4)The relation between cartridge output and phono stage signal-to-noise ratio is what primarily determines the amount of hiss that will be present when playing a record. Adding gain further downstream will not improve that; it will just result in using the volume control at lower settings.
I suspect that the 0.8 mv version of the cartridge would be suitable, but I can’t say that with any certainty. If you already haven’t done so, it would be a good idea to research what cartridges others have reported using with the EF-1.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al
1)The phono stage’s specified hum and noise figure of 88 db below a 10 mv input corresponds to only 60 db below 0.4 mv, which seems marginal at best.
2)The 88 db figure may be based on psychoacoustic "weighting" techniques that are commonly used in deriving such figures, meaning that the unweighted performance may be worse.
3)The 52 db max gain spec of the phono stage is about 8 to 10 db less than the gains of most phono stages that are intended for use with cartridges having rated outputs in the vicinity of 0.4 mv.
4)The relation between cartridge output and phono stage signal-to-noise ratio is what primarily determines the amount of hiss that will be present when playing a record. Adding gain further downstream will not improve that; it will just result in using the volume control at lower settings.
I suspect that the 0.8 mv version of the cartridge would be suitable, but I can’t say that with any certainty. If you already haven’t done so, it would be a good idea to research what cartridges others have reported using with the EF-1.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al