Cartridge Loading- Low output M/C

Oh, and I just wanted to say- the Miyajima Madake cartridge designer effectively loads the cartridge at effectively 60 ohms (I know as we have exchanged emails on the subject) using his in house SUT and amps and doesn’t add any cap in parallel- he prefers the sound. This is not the same as the recommended load which if I remember correctly is c. 200 ohms //0.68uF which I believe gives the "best" measured frequency response.
Some people (reviewers) claim that the Madake is best into a 1k or 10k or even a 47k load and I disagree totally- even though we all love the cartridge- so what is truth?
The units that I have are, if I remember correctly, #106 and #261 and they sound a bit different- the new one has a little less bass and a more strident HF and doesn’t measure quite as well as the older one which has c. 350hours of play, so hopefully it will break in and perform like its venerable ancestor does :-)

This is nonsense to ask other people what is the optimal loading for your own cartridge. Everyone's free to choose. 

Why is it nonsense? I know that I started out by seeing what others were loading the Madake with and it was seeing the huge range of answers that was posted that, to some extent, triggered the analysis process that I have gone through. 
If you view the cartridge as essentially a musical transformer taking what has been transferred to disk and producing a sound that you like then that is one thing, but if the idea is to, somehow, transfer the information from the disk to your ears in as perfect, unmodified, a way as possible then that is something entirely different.
At the very least, you'd think that getting something close to a decent conformance to the de-emphasis characteristic that corresponds to the original recording pre-emphasis would be a decent start, but as should be obvious, that is not so easy to achieve and some understanding of the limitations and trade offs in the choices that need to be made would seem to me to be valuable and I commend the original requestor for initiating this exchange.

I posted the thread. If its nonsense..stop reading it. I have learned a lot about the subject thanks to all the contributors.

What is nonsense is when you don't ask. Where on earth would you inform yourself regarding cartridge loading?

These forums are an amazing asset to those of us who want to learn more. 

I truly appreciate the patience and wisdom that have been shared in this thread.

Hi Wyn,

Thanks for providing the excellent and thought-provoking analysis. I see no flaws in it as far as it goes. And in fact the manual for the OP’s phono stage states that the higher capacitance setting (570 pf) can sometimes be beneficial with respect to "interference rejection," when used with LOMCs.


However I believe what underlies the differing perspectives between your analysis and what I, Atmasphere, and JCarr have maintained is that while your analysis focuses on rejection of RFI per se, as reflected in your choice of 10 MHz in the analysis, I and the others have focused on energy that may be generated by the cartridge itself, at and near the resonant frequency. Not directly in response to musical information, which is presumably not present at frequencies of hundreds of kHz and above, but rather in response to "surface noise," tics and pops, and other causes of unwanted high frequency modulation of the output of the cartridge. Or (and I’m just speculating here) perhaps as a result of upper order harmonic distortion components that may be generated by the cartridge in response to musical information at lower frequencies.


As Atmasphere stated in a post in this thread on 5-21-2018:

... the cartridge inductance combined with the tone arm cable capacitance forms a tuned RF circuit- which is energized by the cartridge signal. It can be over 30 db higher than the phono signal- thats about 1000x more powerful!

Note the words "which is energized by the cartridge signal."

I guess the bottom line, though, is that as is usual in audio there are many complexities and competing tradeoffs involved, as well as many system dependencies, and consequently there are multiple paths to an optimal setup, and multiple paths to setups that are less than optimal to varying degrees.

And speaking of complexities and competing tradeoffs, your mention of SUTs certainly brings many more into play. As I’m sure you realize, optimal loading with a SUT will usually be different than when a cartridge is driving an active circuit, in part because of the need to optimize loading of the transformer itself, to minimize ringing and resonances. Another consideration being that capacitance that is present on the secondary side of the SUT will be presented to the cartridge multiplied by the square of the turns ratio.

BTW, was the AD797 one of the integrated circuits you mentioned having designed? If so, or even if they were anything comparable, I’m truly impressed!

Best regards,
-- Al

P.S: @terry9 ;-)