Phono stage matching - how critical

What they all said. Contrary to Mesch's opinion, I prefer MM and MI cartridges, as a class, to HOMC cartridges, as a class. In fact, I once owned two successive versions of the Benz Glider myself. I find that any of the better MM/MI cartridges are preferable, to my ears in my system. There is no right or wrong in this case.

Which MM/MI do you prefer, Lewm? Just curious.

By the way the Soundsmith isn't an mm design- a point suggested by some of the responses to the op.

The more critical matching is the phono stage to the preamp / line stage. If the phono stage is a tube unit with higher output impedance and the preamp / line stage is a low input impedance solid state unit. the mismatch will negatively impact the phono stage performance.

Dear Bpoletti, What you write is true in principle but is hardly ever a problem in practice. Nearly any worthy SS linestage will offer at least 10K ohm input impedance, and nearly any tube phono stage will offer an output Z of less than 2K ohms. Usually it's more like 1K out into 20K to 50K.

Wrm57, I am way into vintage MM/MI cartridges: Stanton 980LZS (which is actually low output), Grace Ruby, Acutex LPM320, Grado TLZ are among my favorites. I do also like low output MCs. As a group, HOMCs rank 3rd with me, which means I no longer ever use one.