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Difficulty determining cartridge specs for preamp

Hi. Just bought a new Ortofon Samba MC cartridge. I use a Perreaux SXV1 phono preamp. It has a double bank of 12 adjustable DIP settings on the rear panel. The owner's manual explains how to set the DIP settings based on impedence loading (ohms), capacitance loading (pF), and gain (dB). Unfortunately, my Samba spec sheet doesn't use these terms. It gives every other spec imaginable, but nothing instructive of setting my DIP switches. I have written Perreaux, but I am skeptical of the settings they provided given the limited info I was able to offer. I have also written Ortofon, but not heard back yet. Any suggestions??
klipschking
4 responses Add your response
viridian's avatar
viridian
4,184 posts
 
Oops, too many cartridges on the page and I picked the wrong one:

http://www.needledoctor.com/Ortofon-Samba-Low-Output-MC-Phono-Cartridge

Internal impedance is 6 ohms and recommended loading is greater than 10 ohms. Still sticking to 100 ohms +. My apologies to all for my slopiness.
viridian's avatar
viridian
4,184 posts
 
MoFi, thanks for drawing attention to the specs. The 10 ohms is the internal impedance of the cartridge, not the recommended loading, which is specced, rather obliquely, at greater than 20 ohms. I will stick to my recommendation of trying both 100 and 1K ohms and try to narrow it down from there.
mofimadness's avatar
mofimadness
4,152 posts
 
The specs I found for the Samba indicate an output of .38mv, so I would recommend up around 60db or so, but as Viridian said above, it also depends on the gain of your preamp added in. The load impedance is stated at 10 ohms and usually moving coils really don't care about the capacitance, (that's a moving magnet/moving coil thing). Set the capacitance to zero/off or the lowest possible value. The tracking force is between 1.3 to 1.8 grams and I would go at the higher end of that scale.
viridian's avatar
viridian
4,184 posts
 
Set the capacitance to the lowest setting. If you have the spec for the internal impedance of the cartridge, set the impedance of the phono preamp to 10X this and then try 20X this. If that info is not available, try setting your phono pre to 100 ohm and compare this to 1000 ohms as impedance is best set by ear. If one or the other sounds good then try some close values, such as 200 or 250 ohms. Again, gain will depend on the gain of your preamp or integrated amp, but somewhere North of 54db should work. If you can't get the volume control to at least 10 O'clock go for less gain.
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