@lewm You are right, i thought it was a current-driven because of the "Automatic Load Impedance" feture advertized by the manufacturer, and because of the comments in the beginning of my post (from 2015). But never too late to learn. As we noticed now the real current-driven phono stage works best with cartridge with very low impedance.
But based on a comment from one of the WLM owner (from 2015): "The Phonata works very well between 25 - 100 ohm cartridges".
And base on info from the manual: " MC-Input Impedance Range: < 100 Ohm to 50kOhm".
This is definitely opposite to the current-driven phono stages.
In the beginning of this thread two people made two different comments:
@hdm
@larryi
So i think Larry was right. The question is which SUTs step-up ratio i have to choose now when i will replace WLMs internal SUTs if my cartridges are all low impedance (under 8 Ω estimate ) and low output (under 0.25 estimate) ?
But based on a comment from one of the WLM owner (from 2015): "The Phonata works very well between 25 - 100 ohm cartridges".
And base on info from the manual: " MC-Input Impedance Range: < 100 Ohm to 50kOhm".
This is definitely opposite to the current-driven phono stages.
In the beginning of this thread two people made two different comments:
@hdm
The Phonata operates in current mode with MC cartridges. Not anything really new here. I’ve been using an Aqvox for about 7 years now which operates similarly.
@larryi
It may be the case that "automatic" really means "fixed." There are some manufacturers that don’t think that any sort of precise setting of loading is important and so they go with a reasonable fixed value, typically somewhere around 125-150 ohms (e.g., Linn).
With the phonostages I have worked with, I like relatively little loading (high value resistor such as 47k) or no loading at all. Over a huge range of values, I don’t hear that much change except for an undesirable loss of top end "air" with values lower than 125 ohms.
So i think Larry was right. The question is which SUTs step-up ratio i have to choose now when i will replace WLMs internal SUTs if my cartridges are all low impedance (under 8 Ω estimate ) and low output (under 0.25 estimate) ?