Cartridge incompatibility, Soundsmith and Luxman

Tomic, your point, other than the notion about personal preference, is lost on me. Can you be more explicit? Do you really not know what comes after the load R? I’m guessing that was rhetorical.

The location on the board for the resister is probably either surface mount or sized for a 1 watt or less resister. 1/4 or 1/8 watt is fine. Vishay? How's about 42 cents.     

Obviously you know nothing about quality resistors. Vishay is a big company, and they make dozens of different types of resistors, much like Caddock. So not all Vishay resistors are created equal. One might debate the need for or an expensive nude Vishay in this application, but in my experience there is a soupçon of an increase in SQ associated with that choice, and it’s a cheap luxury item. Like I said, Caddock TF030 are very transparent as well. I doubt I could hear a difference between a nude Vishay TX series and the TF030. Form factor of the Caddock can make it difficult to install in a PCB designed for a standard through hole resistor. 1/4W would actually be overkill; both of these types are >1/4W.

no, i don’t know what is right after the initial loading R. 2 lazy to hunt down a schematic..but the guy with something like 11 patents ..and said inventor of the cartridge in question seemed interested in the schematic… there are after all things, nasty things like tanking circuits… Alas, i am just a retired Economist with a soldering iron and a penchant for surfing the far edge of utility functions of laser trimmed input R, double blind be dammed….

best to all !