Helikon LOADING

Jeff, there are three kinds of mechanical damping I can think of, are you including all of them in your wonderment?
1.) Cart. suspension
2.) Tonearm effective mass (static inertia)
3.) Possible silicone trough damping or magnetic damping.

Nsgarch - Just pondering magnetic damping from the cart working like an alternator. If you go back to your descriptions of sound at too high and too low of loading values, it is similar to what you would expect of an underdamped and overdamped (respectively) suspension.

Dear Jeff: You are right: the mechanical damping affect the frequency response too.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Gmorris: +++++ " the optimal loading value is indeed system dependent " +++++

Maybe there are something that I missed about because I still can't understand your statement.

For me, for a cartridge perform flat ( frequency response ), exist a precise load impedance that is not system dependent because we have to set it through a resistor change or through a variable resistor or through a impedance switch. What have we to take in count for we can have the right resistor value ( this one is the input impedance of the phonopreamp )?: the manufacturer load impedance value and the sum of the impedance of the tonearm internal wires with the impedance of the tonearm interconnect cable. These impedances sum has to be added to the resistor value for to find the precise resistor value for the cartridge can " see " the right load impedance value where it performs flat.
Sorry, I can't see your " system dependent ".

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Jeff, re: mechanical damping affecting total load impedance, I suppose it does contribute by a small factor (you are talking about a reactance-type current in the coils damping the cantilever movement, right?)

Anyway, the effect on the freq. response curve would be small I should think, compared to the deviation from flat that would be caused by a load change of even 20 or 30 ohms.

It's one of those factors like VTA, where a less than optimum configuration will only yield 4th (or was it 8th) order distortions which are essentially inaudible. Whereas even a slight mis-adjustment of SRA is quite audible. It's sort of like that I think.