LSA Voyager GAN Amplifier

Different story with a mechanical/electrical source as MM or MC Cartridges, they need sometime none or lots of electrical damping, which in some cases can give the impression of more detail extension and clarity, maybe because of reduced bass output. As they do not have a mostly fixed output impedance like a solid state output stage has. We used to load down the Supex SD900 with 10ohms to get them to sound right.
Cheers George

George,
No, what I heard from 47K loading of a few MC cartridges into a few phono stages was more extended HF, rather than reduced bass which thins the tonal balance but doesn't yield more HF.

Viber
No, what I’m saying these are two very different scenarios, one (the phono cartridge) has quite variable output impedance due to it being a electro/mechanical device, it "could" go very high impedance in the highs. Where a solid state output stage is quite fixed, especially if it direct coupled, if capacitor coupled and not large enough it can go very high in the lows.

You try the same but with the preamp output stage(<100ohms) vs the poweramp input stage 37kohm or 100kohm, you won’t find a difference.

Also you haven’t mentioned what’/if the parallel pf capacitance has been used across each channel of the cartridge, or in the phono stage.

I’ve done many presentation at our audio society, with a solid state direct coupled low impedance output source (eg: <100ohms) you will not find any difference in sound with a load impedance of 38kohm v 100kohm, and nobody at the meetings could pick the difference, the 100kohm "could" get slightly more noisier, as seen on a scope, and create filtering effects if the interconnects are extremely high capacitance.

Cheers George

With the 1K output impedance, 38K is a ratio of 38, and 100K is a ratio of 100, both way above 10, so I would expect the 38K and 100K to sound the same, as you found.  However, public demonstrations in unfamiliar systems are not as revealing as making changes in your own familiar system.  So ricevs' improvement in sound quality must be due mainly to the better quality resistor he is using in his mods compared to stock.  Let ricevs say whether I am correct or not.

You are both wrong.....he he....resistor types/brands can make as much difference as anything.....We found that out years ago with different brands of resistors loading our moving coil cartridge.....huge differences.

Same with impedance.  $150K sounded much better than 49K......both had the same brand and type of resistor.  The "better" brand of resistor was already superior to the stock resistor.  This is on the input of the amp (not a cartridge load.....we also liked 100 ohms for our Supex cartridges).

Here is an interesting story for all you measurement types.  Back in the 70s it was all a big club....everyone knew everyone.  High end was super small and few companies.  We knew David Fletcher who owned Sumiko (importer of Supex and Fidelity Research Cartridges)....in fact, we were in the same City (Berkeley, CA).  So, we borrowed 10 brand new Supex cartridges form Dave and mounted them on universal headshells and gave each one a number on a piece of small masking tape on the side of the cartridge.  Three of us listened all day on my system......All the cartridges came with frequency sweep graphs that told you nothing as they were so similar.  There were three categories of cartridges.....the meh ones....the OK ones and the great ones (three of them).....and one was clearly the winner..  This is how you learn to trust your hearing.  All three of us agreed with every ranking.....it was easy to hear.  I wonder if cartridges are as variable today as they were back in the 70s.   By the way, we did the same test with 5 Fidelity Research cartridges....maybe a year later.....mostly we preferred those to the Supex.