The one thing I have learned is that you'll want a phono stage that is
highly adjustable if you want to use a moving coil cartridge. Loading
can make the difference in SQ. I was interested in the Ayre phono stage
as well but it did not have the correct loading available for my AMG
cartridge and I ended up with a Musical Surrounding Nova II.
@joey54 If you have to load the cartridge to get it to sound right, this is a sign that the phono section is unstable and unhappy when RFI is applied to its input. Loading detunes the Radio Frequency resonant peak that is created by the inductance of the cartridge and the capacitance on the interconnect cable. This is why some phono preamps sound better when the cartridge is 'loaded'.
Cartridge manufacturers make loading recommendations because they have no idea if the phono section you're using is stable or not. Generally their recommendations are in fact that- very general, since they don't know the amount of capacitance in the tone arm cable either. If the phono section is stable, the stock 47K load will do the job.
A down side of loading is that you are causing the coils of the cartridge to drive a much lower impedance- meaning that they are doing more work. This extra energy comes from somewhere- the stylus in the groove- so when you employ lower impedances for loading you also reduce the compliance of the cartridge and its ability to track higher frequencies. Something to think about.
