| 100,000 ohms! [message #13647] |
Fri, 08 February 2008 22:20  |
Bill Epstein
Messages: 1088
Registered: May 2009
Location: Smoky Mts. USA
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Illuminati (2nd Degree) |
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Clever fellow on Audiogon, rauliruegas, recommends 100k ohms loading for moving magnet carts. With about 20 hours on the Virtuoso Wood I tried it tonight with some new albums. Excellent sound. The Woody, BTW, is really getting great. Deep bass, rich mids and airy highs. What the Grado Sonata would sound like w/o the syrupy mids and rolled off highs. Still scared of that proboscis, tho'. Terrified to brush the stylus.
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| Re: 100,000 ohms! [message #13651 is a reply to message #13647] |
Tue, 12 February 2008 12:02  |
hurdy_gurdyman
Messages: 416
Registered: May 2009
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Illuminati (1st Degree) |
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I have a Grado Blue I've played with the loading on. Grado used to recommend around 10k-12k ohm for all of them, but changed it to 47k ohm recently. Many think this was to end the confusion caused by the odd recommendation they had had, as the cartridge itself hadn't changed any. Grado doesn't use damping on their carts and tend to rely on damping electrically. Joe Grado often mentioned not liking any damping built in. I didn't try going higher on mine, but did take it down to around 15k ohm. It made a slight reduction in highs (and I mean slight) but did sound a bit cleaner (as in less edgy). Again, the difference was slight. I left it at 15k ohm, as minimizing as much listener fatigue as possible throughout the system is a high priority for me, as I have the stereo on all day typically. Dave 
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| Re: 100,000 ohms! Uhhhhh, maybe not. [message #13652 is a reply to message #13650] |
Sat, 16 February 2008 23:34 |
Bill Epstein
Messages: 1088
Registered: May 2009
Location: Smoky Mts. USA
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Illuminati (2nd Degree) |
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I've been feeding the Wood a steady diet of Jazz and 100,000 ohms was sounding good. Tonight, with about 40 hours on, finally, I played the Saint-Saens 3rd Symphony. Loud. With both amps, the 45 and a yet-to-be-named 50 watt 6SN7/KT-88 P-P. Not both at the same tyme, of course Horrible! Que Barbarida! Veiled,confused and congested. $29 Radio Shack mics weren't used by RCA so I suspected something wrong. That, after visiting with Steve Brown today and we agreed how good the higher impedance was. Switched back to 50,000 ohms and Et Viola, verrr nice. And that's where it will stay.
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| Re: 100,000 ohms! Uhhhhh, maybe not. [message #13653 is a reply to message #13652] |
Sun, 17 February 2008 09:11 |
SteveBrown
Messages: 330
Registered: May 2009
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Grand Master |
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Well, very interesting. On the preamp I'm building right now, I actually have it switchable: 47k, 100k and 1M. So I can try different settings. I'm betting different music may work better w/different cartridge loading, but not sure. By the way, why 1M?? Well, I have a Grado Sonata that likes a 47k impedance but being a 0.8mv cartridge, I have to use a step up transformer for it. Since the primary impedance the cartridge sees is reflected from the secondary, and in this case stepped down by a good size factor, starting w/1M on the secondary will give me closer to the loading the cart wants to see. At some point I'll try to build a hybrid phono stage (FET + tube) to eliminate the need for the step up transformer. Oh, and the pre that is under construction should be fun, it is an all octal pre based on the Octal Coronet (Hagerman) design, then going to a 6SN7 line stage. Even the rectifier is an octal. I've tried octals (6SL7's) in the phono stage before and they can be very microphonic, but I think I've got that licked this time by using a Russian equivelent to the 6SL7. In some tests I've done I can rap the glass envelope with a pencile while it's working and not get any microphonics. Sounds great so far, too!
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