Can you run the HANA SL MC at 100 ohms?


I am tempted by the Hana low output MC  cartridge which has gotten great reviews and seems good value. However the mfr specs say the loading should be > 400 ohms. My own phono stage only allows 100 ohms for MC cartridges-as do many others. Has anyone tried the Hana at 100 ohms and were you happy with the result?  Also what difference should I expect to hear at 100 versus 400?
rrm

Showing 3 responses by lewm

As mulveling says, you will lose some output signal voltage at 100 ohms load, but also you will lose some extreme high frequency response.  The cartridge may sound a bit dull and rolled off with that load and a source impedance of 30 ohms, besides the penalty in over all gain.  However, it should be no big deal to change the load resistance afforded by your phono input, unless it uses an SUT to boost gain, in which case it gets a bit more complicated, but still not un-fixable.
The 100-ohm load will not sound "bad" with these cartridges, either the SL or the EL, but the SQ will be colored to a degree by the effect of the load resistance on the HF response and on total gain. It’s OK to like it that way. Lots of guys load down the Denon DL103, which has a similarly high internal resistance, even below 100 ohms, and claim to love it.

But it should be a simple matter for any competent tech to open up the chassis of a phono stage and replace the phono load resistor with a more appropriate value. I would suggest 1K ohm and forgeddaboudit. If the LOMC gain is being generated via an SUT, then one trick would be to increase the value of the load resistor that is across the secondaries of the SUT, to a value that results in the desired higher impedance being seen at the primaries. For that, the tech would need to obtain information about the turns ratio of the SUT, as well, from the maker of the phono stage.