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

Al, But I would guess that the capacitance would be even lower if there were no shield. Which was my point, altho I probably should have been more explicit. Geometry is the major determinant of the IC capacitance, but shielding adds to it. I think that is accurate, but I am open to enlightenment if not.

Hi Lew,

We're both right, as I see it. But the basic underlying point I wanted to convey in my response is that if low capacitance is required for a particular application, focus should not be placed exclusively or even primarily on unshielded designs.

Blue Jeans LC-1, btw, is a coaxial cable, with the shield (actually a double shield) serving as the return conductor. So comparison with an unshielded cable that is otherwise similar would not be meaningful or possible, as such a cable would not work. On the other hand, I agree that a cable design having both the signal and the return conductors within a shield, when compared with an otherwise identical cable having no shield, would have higher capacitance.

Best regards,
-- Al

If you use a separate ground wire for your phono interconnect, be sure to try different types of wire for the ground. I recently discovered by accident that the type of ground wire made a significant difference sonically. In my case, the ground wire runs from my SUT box to the phono preamp. All it does at the SUT box end is ground the aluminum chassis in which the transformers are mounted. It is not electrically connected to the transformers or any other part of the audio signal path, yet it makes a major difference. Go figure.

Salectric, It doesn't "figure". The gauge of the wire might make a difference, since any resistance in the ground wire would potentially allow the component to "float" at some tiny voltage above ground, which could potentiate hum, but otherwise, I cannot fathom why the character of the wire would make a difference, assuming copper or silver in the first place. Was there any difference in gauge (thickness) of the conductor? Or is it possible that when you were changing the ground wire, you did a better job making contacts between the two chassis? (That could also have an effect.)

I agree it doesn't make logical sense (at least anything that makes sense to me). That's why I mentioned it. I didn't notice any correlation between wire gauge and sound qualities. I tried about a half-dozen wires including solid silver, solid copper, and stranded copper before settling on some DH Labs 12 gauge silver-plated stranded copper. Of the ones I tried, this had the most neutral tonal balance with good dynamics and detail.