Is it possible for a record to be too loud?

The most common mistake with a phono cartridge is to set tracking force at the lightest end of the cartridge spec. Set the catridge at the upper end of the range and see if the problem goes away. You do damage to stylus and record with mistracking at too light a pressure.

I believe companies set their tracking forces too low for fear of scaring away customers.
I always start at or very near the top recomended force and often find best sound is .5 gram above that.

Atmasphere
A moving coil phono section that overloads with 1mV from the cartridge is a phono section with poor overload characteristics, FWIW.

Atmasphere,
It surely cannot be true. Perhaps you or Al can elaborate, but overloading is a function of the cartridge's output AND the phono stage's gain/sensitivity setting, isn't it? Theoretically, you could probably overload with a low output MC cart if you have a gain mismatch large enough. From your post, it sounds like you can only overload with MM carts.

I'm always baffled how much gain matching is ignored in discussions on this forum. This thread is a good example. On my modest (compared to many A-goner) system, a difference of a few dB between an optimal and sub-optimal gain setting can easily be heard. The sound becomes unpleasantly shrill and just sounds too loud even at lower volume settings. 55 dB of gain with a cartridge with an output of 1.05 mV is a huge mismatch under most circumstances, in my opinion and experience. Perhaps with a passive line stage it may be ok, but never an active one. I'd guess anything above 50 dB would be too much gain for this cart. I have a Hall & Oates record that's recorded so hot that it sounds just too loud even on the setting that works with every other record. I'd look into it first.

Actusreus:

I agree. It is surprising how much gain matching seems to be ignored in terms of really optimising sound quality, not just here but on many forums.

IMO, even with a good quality phono stage, probably more so in fact, the window for optimum sound quality is very narrow. Probably within 2 dB with low output MC's.

Ultimately, I think it's a lot easier to come to this conclusion if one has a phono stage with infinitely variable gain as opposed to fixed gain, but most stages on the market do indeed have fixed gain.

And 55 dB of gain is a whopping ton of gain for a 1.05 mV cartridge. 48-50 would probably be the sweet spot in most systems.

Atmasphere,
It surely cannot be true. Perhaps you or Al can elaborate, but overloading is a function of the cartridge's output AND the phono stage's gain/sensitivity setting, isn't it? Theoretically, you could probably overload with a low output MC cart if you have a gain mismatch large enough. From your post, it sounds like you can only overload with MM carts.

The issue is can a cartridge of 1.05 mV or so overload a phono section set up for a low output moving coil cartridge.

1.05mV is about 6 db more than 0.5mV which is considered low output. That represents a doubling of voltage from 0.5mv to 1.05mV.

If that 6 db is making a difference in the overload of the phono section its overhead is poor. That is the long and short of it. In our phono section which works with 0.2mV, it cannot be overloaded by a high output 5mV cartridge.

55db is on teh low side as low output moving coil phono sections go; we have 60 db (I am of the opinion that you don't need that much gain if your circuits are low noise).

So I really think that you need to look at loading and the setup of the cartridge in the arm- its very likely that some other factor has been overlooked. IOW I am sure you are hearing something but overload of the phono section isn't (or shouldn't be) it.