Help me improve Rega P2

Jmg1949, for $300 I must agree that a better cartridge would be the best upgrade. I am sure you will find Als' post helpful. I would not spend much to improve the turntable proper until I felt the need to refurbish. I was born in 1949. Can’t help but believe allot of great “products” hit the marketplace in that year. Cheers!

Al, I knew when I sow your post here I was about to learn something. Given the roughly 200pF contribution of tonearm wire and cable, it might be possible that cartridge manufacturers take this into account when making preamp loading recommendations? I ask this because the Manufacture rec for the Blue Point No. 2 I own is 50-100pf. Just a thought induced by your post, as most do. Thanks.

Thanks, Mesch! I've seen numerous indications over the years that load capacitance recommendations for moving magnet cartridges are based on the total of all capacitances between the cartridge pins and the phono stage input (inclusive of the latter). Which would seem to make sense since the wiring capacitance can vary greatly depending on the particular cable type and its length. And if the turntable has a connector on the rear (which I believe the P2 does not have) it would of course be readily possible for the user to substitute cables and thereby vary the capacitance over a wide range. The 200 pf figure, btw, was just my rough guess in this particular situation, and substitution of a relatively short cable having particularly low capacitance per unit length (were that practical on the particular turntable) could easily cut that in half.

Also, I took a look at the brochure and the user manual for the Blue Point No. 2 at sumikoaudio.net and I didn't see any load capacitance recommendation indicated. But I can't recall ever seeing a recommendation as low as 50 to 100 pf for any other cartridge. Also, the BP2 is of course an HOMC rather than a MM, and while I don't have a good feel for the sensitivity of typical HOMC's to load capacitance, I suspect it is likely to be dissimilar to that of MM's.

Best regards, and happy new year!
-- Al

Correction to my previous post: FWIW, I just noticed this somewhat ambiguous statement in the text of the manual for the Blue Point No. 2:

Note: If your receiver or pre-amp has capacitance loading capabilities, a Sumiko high output moving coil cartridges should be loaded with a value no higher than 200pf, and ideally below 100pf.

My guess is, again, that that refers to total capacitance including the wiring, but given the wording it's hard to say for sure.

Best regards,
-- Al

Thanks, Marty (Viridian). It should be noted, though, that the DB Systems kit, or any other similar kit, can only add capacitance, not reduce it.

But we tend to focus on those things that we can measure, rather than those that we can't.

True enough, in many cases. And I personally have never experimented with intentionally mismatching load capacitance of MM's relative to the manufacturer's recommendation, to see how much difference it would make. But I see it this way: Audio is a pursuit in which many people concern themselves with unexplainable, unpredictable, and often dubious minutiae, even in some cases to the extent of things like which way a fuse is oriented. Given that, why introduce an explainable, predictable, and known inaccuracy into the system, notwithstanding the possibility that it **might** be minor in degree, or perhaps even subjectively preferable? And if it should happen to be subjectively preferable, chances are it is compensating for a problem elsewhere, which ideally and hopefully should be found and fixed rather than compensated for.

Best regards,
-- Al