MM cartridges and capacitance

Adding capacitance will in some cases flatten the frequency response of the cartridge. Shure V-15s use to have a midrange droop that could be corrected by the proper loading. Ortofons use to come from the factory with a "cap 210" which slipped over the pins in Europe; I was a dealer for them then and tried to get some but the American importer had never heard of them. As you have probably seen almost everything about phono cartridges in contentious but I thing it safe to say that in some cases at least loading can be of considerable importance.

I have one of these CAP210 things on my Ortofon on a VMS20E MKII. Did not even know it was there. Those cartridges need 400 pf per Ortofon, which is more the most pre and cables can provide. I forgot I did not switch in any capacitance, so I set the maximum of 220, plus cable, plus the unknown CAP210, which equalled over 600pf, which seemed to make playback overly noisey ?

Load and cable capacitance will interact with the inductance of the cartridge's coils to produce a resonant peak in frequency response, at upper treble or ultrasonic frequencies. Increased capacitance will raise the amplitude and lower the frequency of that peak.

MM cartridges often count on that peak to compensate for what would otherwise be an upper treble rolloff, at frequencies that are within the audible (<20 kHz) part of the spectrum.

BTW, that is the exact opposite of the effect of capacitance in line-level interconnects, where too much capacitance will roll off the upper treble. In that situation, the cable capacitance is interacting with the output impedance of the component driving the cable, which is essentially resistive and not inductive.

Best regards,
-- Al