Tube Preamp Paired with Tube Phono Stage?

Actusreus, (in case its not clear from Al's comments) the reason some preamps offer more loading settings, and that they are audible has to do with the fact that such preamps are not 'graceful', as Al put it, when dealing with RF energy. IOW, the RF energy affects the way those preamps sound.

All we ever found with loading (our preamps have a loading strip above the phono connectors so you can put anything there you want) is there is a slight change in the noise floor.

If you have a moving magnet cartridge, the loading can affect the sound of it directly, IOW the effects are occurring at audio frequencies.

Thank you, Atmasphere. This does help with understanding the issue. I don't want to keep dragging this topic, but I must ask: if Fremer (or anyone else for that matter) hears clearly definable differences in the quality of the sound, not the noise, with different resistive loads when using an MC cartridge, is he full of it?

Jtwrace,

The Andros is a beauty and everyone raves about it, but it is also nearly twice the price of the Chinook, so they are really not in the same league. If you can afford the Andros, it seems it's an easy choice, at least on paper. elast

I believe Jonathan Carr, the designer of the Lyra cartridges, has stated that modern cartridges do not need loading to tame ringing and a response peak because those phenomena occur at ultrasonic frequencies; but, loading may be beneficial with phonostages that are prone to overloading from such peaks. Where overloading is not a problem, he preferred the wide open sound of using very little loading (e.g., 47k ohms).

I don't think Fremer is "full of it." One can quite readily hear the effects of increased loading. Loading acts like a form of tone control--reducing high frequencies. For my taste, with my phonostages, I prefer much less loading than is usually recommended; too much loading (i.e., a lower numeric value for the resistor) causes a significant loss of "air" on top.

The late Allen Wright was also among those reputable designers who advocated "no load", or 47K ohms in other words, for use with LOMC cartridges. I am sometimes astounded to read what some listeners prefer in terms of phono load resistors, often so low in value as to significantly drain off signal voltage to ground, i.e., where the load R is much less than 10X the internal resistance of the cartridge.

So we have support for loading at 100 ohms and 47k ohms, and possibly everything in between. So to summarize, it depends... :-)