phono pre loading and gain question

Marty,
Sorry to but in on Tom's possible answer, but without knowing the input sensitivity of Skeyebox's amp and the efficiency of his speakers and the size of his listening room and what average listening level Skeyebox personally prefers... Who can say that he will or won't have enough gain with his present set up???

Marty, I have the Shelter and I use a Cotter step-up with 20db gain, a phono stage with 46db gain, and a line stage with 20db gain. That adds up to 86db gain, prior to entering the amplifier. I think that I am running a little "hot" and could drop back to about 80db without compromising anything. But I think that cartridge really needs about 80+db total gain in the front end before going to the amp.

You can do with less, but then you have to crank the volume, and raise the noise floor with it. I have also found that when you try to run the Shelter with too little phono gain, it suffers dynamically and sounds lifeless. I tried going direct into the phono stage and eliminating the 20db gain of the Cotter, and found it totally unsuitable with only 66db total gain in the front end. It was "dead" sounding that way. I put the Cotter back inline, and it was great. No contest.

On the other hand, unless the amplifier input is very sensitive (like the Monarchy Audio SM-70) and the speakers are very efficient (maybe 95 dB/watt or better), TWL is probably correct that the 68 dB of overall preamplification would not provide adequate volume levels with the Shelter 501.

To add to Plato's point, I have 100db speakers and my amp only requires three-tenths of a volt input to reach max output.