Does Everyone Use 2 Phono Cables with SUT

Keep the IC from SUT to phono stage short - and low capacitance if possible.

PHONO: basic advice: do not use interconnects to avoid potential problems. if so, as short as possible. 

SUT: tonearm phono cable with ground into SUT. Phono cable with ground out of SUT to Phono MM input and a ground somewhere nearby. I have had to extend a few din cable's ground wires, they were too short to reach a poorly placed ground too far from the phono jacks.

Surprisingly/Confusingly: Fidelity Research FRT-3 has no ground attachment fitting. It's captive output cable has a ground wire with spade. Meanwhile, FRT-3G version has added a ground terminal on the back of the SUT. Captive output cable same, has ground wire with spade.

Tonearm ground wire can be separate, bypass the SUT, and go from the arm directly to a ground anywhere if needed. 

Some equipment, phono stage, etc have 'ground lift' to solve 'ground loops'.

AntiCables make excellent “interconnects” which are both shielded AND very low in capacitance, because the shield wire is wound around the signal carrying wires. Therefore the shield is perpendicular to the field generated. They also make “phono cables” having a DIN plug at one end and RCAs at the other.  XLR-terminated  Balanced versions are available too. I’ve measured the capacitance and it’s vanishingly low.

You don’t need a separate ground wire for the cable coming out of a SUT. A fairly low capacitance, shielded, 0.7m (or less) cable works great. Most shielded cables have shield connected to audio ground on ONE side, and this is the side you should hook into the SUT outputs (i.e. use the SUT as a hub for grounding). 90% of the time, I get no hum this way. I also have cables with a separate ground wire, and honestly this just complicates things - usually I end up grounding on the SUT side and leave the phono stage side floating (which ends up being the same scheme). The internally connected shield is cleaner for this scheme, and works great. The Bob’s Devices cables are constructed just right for this - my only complaint there is the Cardas RCAs grip jacks a little too eagerly. 

dover, mulveling

You both know more than I do. Understanding SUTs and MC Phono inputs or MC Phono Stages or MM/MC Combo units (individual selectable, one input and a switch somewhere) is one of the trickiest parts of moving into MC cartridge(s).

IF an advanced stylus is not properly calibrated and aligned, it’s advantages won’t be heard, and damage can occur.

Wrong x factor, wrong impedance, an advanced MC cartridge could be a little or a lot ’off’ of it’s designed potential superior sound reproduction.

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I don’t like letting machines beat me, nor taking advice on faith, so I dug in, researched, read, found charts, surveyed the heck out of makers sites and vintage variations on hifishark.

Most people, especially still working, don’t have the time or inclination, so they are at the mercy of .... That SUT is very expensive, has no adjustable parameters. OP may have already had it or been given it, in any case he is aware of the large impedance mismatch.

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I had a friend tell me his cartridge was MC low output. I checked it’s alignment on one of my arms, ... set tracking and anti-skate, and tried the same setting on my SUT as my MCLO, so we could compare them..

Not only too much volume, the entire frequency range was shifted. It had very nice range, imaging was there, but Annie Lenox; Sade, any voice was easily different. Weird. Everything was shifted in frequency together.

I spoke to the person who rebuilt it, it is MCHO high output, we should have been using the PASS (skips the sut’s transformer, just sends unaltered signal thru.

He brought the cartridge back, using PASS, everyone’s voices were ’right’. Now it’s full frequency, imaging, all there: it was hard to hear any differences between his and mine, after a while we both described what we heard from each similarly.

The mismatch was not x factor/not too much signal strength, my mx110z phono input can accept strong signals, the IMPEDANCE mismatch was what made is sound significantly different, significantly 'wrong'.