Can good IC's be used instead of dedicated phono's

Dedicated phono cables, besides having a separate chassis ground, are usually much lower capacitance than line level cables. The XLO site shows a distinctly different cable for their phono. My guess is that there is less wire (higher gauge) to keep the capacitance down.

None the less, it does not hurt to try it. You may have to change the capacitance setting though.

I would add to the previous comments that I'm not sure if the Signature 2's are shielded. Judging by the photos and description provided at the XLO site for the Signature 3's I don't think the Signature 3's are shielded, which prompts me to raise that point. Lack of shielding could result in noise issues in a phono cable application that would not occur in a line-level application. There's no harm in giving them a try, though.

Optimizing capacitance is particularly important if the cartridge is a moving magnet type, for which manufacturers usually specify a recommended range of total load capacitance ("total" being the total of the capacitances of the cable, the wiring in the turntable and tonearm, and the input capacitance of the phono stage). For low output moving coil cartridges it is less of an issue, but preferably should be kept as low as possible.

Ordinary copper should be fine for the grounding wire.

Regards,
-- Al

SonicBeauty....not at all....sometimes you don't even need a ground wire. Try it without it first (turn the volume down in case you do need it)

You can use any cable at all for starters. Then work backward. If you have noise with an unshielded cable, then you need a shield. If you have hum, you need to play with grounding. If you have high frequency loss or gain, you need to play with capacitance. Etc.

Your XLO cables are a perfectly good place to start, if your tt has RCA output jacks, as someone else noted. If the phono cable goes direct into the base of the tonearm, then you probably need a cable with a female DIN plug at that end; one DIN plug carries signal for both channels and grounds.

By the way, shielding adds capacitance.