Long cables from turntable or phono stage

The capacitance issue is very interesting. So as well as the transcriptors, I also have a Technics SL5200 turntable which I find sounds sort of flat and lifeless. It has an Ortofon Bronze MM with a recommended capacitance of 150-300pF. The Moon 110LP has adjustable input capacitance of 0 or 100pF. So I should have set the Moon at 100 I guess, assuming that the cables in the turntable are not so superb (basically 35 year old wires) but are unlikely to add up to more than 300?

BTW - using the advice you all gave me, I ran the turntable to the phono stage using the wires from the table and then ran long RCA from the phono stage into the stereo pre amp. Seems to work fine. Happy.

Ninox, in the case you described just above my guess is that the total load capacitance would probably not be very far outside of the recommended 150-300 pf range for either setting of the Moon's input capacitance. And it's quite possible that you might even be within that range for both settings. So while I would expect the two settings to result in some difference in sonics in the treble region, both settings would have to be tried to determine which is preferable.

A point to be aware of, btw, is that the "0 pf" setting will not really be zero. It will be some small amount of stray capacitance in the connectors and internal wiring, plus some small amount of input capacitance of the circuitry. The "100 pf" setting will presumably be 100 pf greater than that amount.

Regards,
-- Al

Al,

The input capacitance of the JC-3 is about 200 pF. I'll probably use Mogami 2549 cable cut to length for my application, most likely around 3'. I suspect LA Pro Audio can tell me the capacitance per foot. They've been very responsive to making cable lengths to my specification. The advice I'm getting is to keep the cable short without putting the motor of the TD 124 on top of the JC-3.

Thanks for your help.
db

Db,

Here is the link to the Mogami spec sheet:

http://www.mogamicable.com/category/bulk/microphone/quality_balanced/

I bought my cable online at Redco Audio in CT

09-22-13: Dbphd
The input capacitance of the JC-3 is about 200 pF.

Interesting. I'm surprised it's that high. The optimal load capacitance for many and probably most MM's falls somewhere in the area of 100 to 300 pf. A phono stage input capacitance of 200 pf would make it impossible to optimally match nearly all of those cartridges, the possible exceptions being those in the 250 to 300 pf area when used with short lengths of low capacitance cables.

How did you obtain that information?

Best regards,
-- Al