Benz Ebony LP loading

I still think gain is your answer. It is the only significant change between the two carts. It(gain) has always been the source of my disappointment with low output mcs'. The output level of the H was like a moving magnet. The Lp is near the lowest you would see in a mc. That has to make a huge difference.

It could also be that I have always found HP's all out recommendations to be highly system dependent. Moreover in upgrading, you expected the the LP to be the same as the H only better. It maybe they went for a diffewrnt sound. I have found this to be frequently true. It is not as easy one might think to design a no holds barred product.

If your experimentations with gain does not reveal satisfying results, I would look at the finer details of the mounting of the benz LP. I have commented before in other posts, the LP is sensitive to tracking force and also to VTA. If the LP is setup to play for 140-160 gram records and you set a 200gram on it, I do notice changes in performances, causing me to either lower tracking force due to increased thickness of the record (As per Michael Fremers' tip on the Vinyl essentials DVD), altering VTA to some small degree. This minor tweak does work and it seems like a trivial matter, but believe me, I have experiemented with this same cartridge from break-in to loading and tracking force/VTA settings to extract the best I could get. It is difficult to adjust VTA on the fly with the SME V tonearm I use now, but I set it to get the best parameters with a wide variety of records and using the MF tweak as needed. Try it out, it works for me and I find that dialing in a TF about 1- 1 1/2 grams lighter makes the thicker LP's come alive.

Of course your mileage may vary (YMMV).
Ciao,
Audioquest4life

Hi Mark - if you can't back off your weight any more, you can always add a bit of blutak stuck on the rear weight to make it heavier.

Stringreen,
I find the fact taht the "H" sounded much better interesting. My Ruby2 was about 6yrs. old with low hours. I picked up a used LP one with 100hrs. or so. I still had my Ruby2 to compare both. The LP was better all around I thought. It was more transparent and had better control of the treble. Though in my room that means nothing. In my friends system my Ruby2 is going through a Quicksilver stepup trans. and just smokes my LP (in my room) regarding the treble.
My phonostage in my preamp has 56dB of gain. It was enough for my Benz. Though loading it at 470 ohms ceratinly dropped that down a tad. I have had 5 or 6 different phonostages in my system for trial. They were all ss and all performed differently. Recently I added a AR PH5 tubed phonostage and really like it. Anything to soften my troublesome treble. It has 58dB gain. I think it helps to have that xtra 2dB. 60dB should be enough for the LP. Every phonostage shows its hand when loading a cart. No two even at the same loading sound the same (relative to the loading that is). I recently had the SIM Audio in my system and would never have considered setting it at 47k. My ears would have bled.
I would try 1000 ohms and see how that sounds. In my sys. 1000 ohms is just slightly different than 47k. If 1000 doesn't do it for you try something btwn 1000 and 500. If 500 seemed too damped you may see bigger differences btwn 1000-500 than I do. I wish I had a 20k or 10k selection. That might just do it for me. You could try the stepup using the MM section. I may try that myself since my friend has one. At least you know that the "H" sounded good. You can always go back to it. I wish I had one to try.