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Phono Cart Impedance Question

I have a little bit of hiss through my 6 ohm, 0.28mV cart but only at a volume pushing the upper end of my listening volume...and it's only audible before I drop the needle, and even then not from the listening position.  I realize I therefore likely have a "non problem"!  

But I still have a generic question on to the sensitivity of producing hiss as it relates to cartridge impedance alone.  If one kept all other cart specs identical (including output of course) would you expect hiss to go up or down at the same volume and system gain if I used an 8 ohm or 12 ohm cart instead?  It seems like the hiss would likely go up just like moving to a higher impedance speaker under the same gain setup but perhaps I'm looking at this incorrectly? I realize moving to a slightly output cart could very well reduce the hiss.

Thoughts?   Sorry if this is a ridiculously obvious question and answer.

three_easy_payments
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
... if I wanted to perhaps try just a couple of the SLN tubes to see if they start to lower noise where would be the best place to start? As follows:

1st gain stage (pair)
2nd gain stage (pair)
output stage (single)

While I'm not familiar with the internal design of the VTPH-2 or 2A, and I've never taken the cover off of my VTPH-2 (having seen a number of past comments which like Jmolsberg's comment above have described finding tube rolling to not provide much if any benefit to Keith's phono stages), my guess is that if you want to give it a try the first gain stage would be where to start. Especially if that is where the 12AX7s are used.  (I don't know if the 12AX7s are used in the first stage or the second stage).  

Since signal level is presumably lowest in that first stage any noise generated by that stage will degrade signal-to-noise ratio more than it would be degraded by a similar amount of noise generated further downstream. Also, it may be relevant that the 12AX7 has a higher intrinsic gain than the 12AT7. 

Good luck. Regards,
-- Al
paulcreed
573 posts
 
You mentioned it may be a tube issue have you tried tapping the tube pins on countertop lightly or tap glass bottle with pencil eraser. I have same issue sometimes with my broken in or newly purchased NOS tubes. Some metal flakes can be on internals of tubes and can make a light hiss or even a horrible noises. I've always been amazed by just tapping a tube can make it dead quiet again.

three_easy_payments's avatar
three_easy_payments OP
2,097 posts
 
@lewm
@almarg
@chakster
@jmolsberg I appreciate all of your really helpful feedback/input.

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
Three, if you are going to do it put them in the first gain stage.

Mike
danvignau's avatar
danvignau
935 posts
 
Back in the early 1980's, I had a preamp with three M/C cartridge impedance settings.  My neighbor, the factory sales rep, change one resistor to give me a 10 ohm setting.  It got rid of the hiss.
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