Should I try a MC cartridge and phono pre?

Sonny,

Sorry for the lingo, VA is Vinyl Asylum. Go to www.audioasylum.com. A link to K&K Audio is in the upper right hand corner. The FAQ's are VERY useful, or you can click on Vinyl for the discussion forum.

The K&K stepups can be set up to work with the the 103R just fine. That cartridge is pretty low output so you'll probably need more gain than some other cartridges would. Ask Kevin at K&K, he'll walk you through the whole thing. He may (should) ask for the gain of your phono and line stages, as I did earlier. He'll need to know this to choose the best turns ratio for the transformers. (The higher the turns ratio, the more gain you get from the transformer.)

Ask him about loading for the 103R when running through a stepup transformer also.

I'd certainly be willing to clear out 2-3 cubic feet in the basement by finding a good home for the PL stuff. I've even got the walnut cabinets. Have your friend email me if interested.

Psychicanimal, I guess what I am missing here is that the direct drive makes noise or hum that gets picked up by the more sensitive MC cartridges? Yes? I would still like to improve the sound anyway, up to a certain price point. Let the Law of Diminishing Returns control the $$$.
Sonny

Not if the cartridge is shielded.

Iseekheils...I never had any hum problem. Actually, because the MC circuit is much lower impedance than MM it is LESS sensitive to magnetic fields that cause hum. Same reason why transistorized preamps, with 50 ohm output impedance are less likely than 600 ohm tube preamps to have hum pickup in interconnects.

Francisco,
In general the quartz digital drive has the least amount of EM noise compared to AC or idler-wheel DC motors. The only consern in DD tables is influence of the power supply EM noise that very often located inside the TT chassis and somewhat transfered vibration of the digital quartz clock to the platter. Depending on the design quality, DD table can even be more quiet than idler-wheel or AC- belt-driven ones. As I previousely mentioned, if you have MM and MC cartridge with the same output voltage, MC cartridge will pick up substantiall less EM noise and will have wider freequency bandwidth in ALL cases, thus will improve ANY turntable.