SME 20/2 SME V or Triplanar VII?

Dan,don't tempt me!I could always throw up that I saved you money,by being the first to recommend the Stylus pressure guage ,we ALL seemed to buy!

Thom,

It will be in my system. It depends on the time I have. I can use the Schroder SQ or the Ikeda.

Hi Dgad,

Frank Schröder suggests that the upper effective mass limit for a silver based ZYX (Airy / Universe) is 15 grams.

My experience points toward this being at the very top, with 11-12 grams giving you a bit more nimbleness.

The Dyna XV-1s does not seem to be as perturbed by a heavy mass tonearm such as my 18 gram ebony Schröder reference, but I prefer to run it with an arm in the 10-15 gram range.

Share your experiences with us when you do the evaluation.

CARTRIDGE LOADING

One rule of thumb I've found to work as a starting point is 5 times the DCR (DC resistance) of the cartridge's coils.

Somewhere between half of this number and double the number invariably seems to work.

All too frequently, you'll see loading recommendations that are as much a statement about the rest of the system as they are about the cartridge.

I. Universe: don't restrict yourself to the seemingly ubiquitous 7-9 ohms. I've recently been loading my Universe at about 18 ohms and plan on exploring even higher before reaching a conclusion.

If memory serves, the low o/p versions of the Airy and Universe cartridges have a DCR of 4 ohms.

So ...

5 times 4 ohms = 20 ohms.

II. XV-1s: somewhere between 35 ohms and 100 should work nicely. Start high and work down.

5 times 6 ohms = 30 ohms. You'll note Dynavector specifies "> 30 ohms" on their website.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Thom,

I have my XV-1s loaded @ 500 ohms. I tried 100 originally but found 500 best. I also load most of my other cartridges @ 500 ohms including the Condor & the Eminent. I experimented w. all cartridges & found that the each one performed best @ 500 ohms. Can it at times be preamp specific. I plug in different resistors into my preamp. I have 100, 200, 500 & 100 & 47. Should I order more before the Universe gets here? I found the low loads to be closed in.

Dgad,

The very low impedance values Thom is discussing assume the use of stepup transformers. When I used stepups I also used sub-100 ohm values, and found that great precision was necessary to optimize the performance of any LOMC.

FWIW, our new high gain phono stage + the .24mv UNIverse are happiest somewhere around 150-225 ohms. If I go any lower it sounds exactly as you described, closed in or muffled. Cello's Supratek Grange + UNIverse sounded best around 100-125 ohms, IIRC.

Assuming your phono stage doesn't include stepups, you might be fine at either 100 or 200. If those aren't optimal I'd bet on something in between.