Ortofon Per Windfeld Load Impedance?


I'm curious to hear what load impedance other PW owners are using for this cartridge. My manual recommends > 10 kOhms which I suspect is a print error. I notice that the dealer sites are recommending >10 Ohms.
taylor514
I routinely change loading with different phono cables. The differences are not subtle. Perhaps Fail can clear this up, I was pretty sure the cartridge is the only thing driving the cable?
FWIW when you have a loading resistance of only 100 ohms, the capacitance of the cable can be neglected. To illustrate this point, even if your capacitance was as high as 0.001uf, the frequencies affected would be measured in MHz.

There **might** be some audible quality of the cable, but in the case of a 100 (or even 500) ohm loading value, the capacitance of the cable will have nothing to do with it.

Result: you can ignore the phono cable as a variable.

I recommend against using the cartridge loading as a tone control. Instead, the cartridge should be loaded to what is known as 'critical damping'. This is the point wherin the loading value damps ringing, but does not roll off the normal response of the cartridge. An excellent way to do this is to 'ring' the cartridge with a squarewave generator and observe the output on an oscilloscope. A ringing waveform will be seen in an unloaded cartridge. Installing a loading resistance will reduce the ringing until a bare amount of overshoot is seen, this will be at or near critical damping.

Once this is done the cartridge can be installed in the arm without fear that the arm or interconnect will be affecting the determined value. Once the cartridge is then set up properly and broken in, then and only then can the phono interconnect be evaluated. **If you use the loading value to 'tune' the phono cable, you are introducing colorations!** I considered capitalizing that but I don't like to shout.

Thanks Ralph,
You've validated my position concerning irrelevance of the phono cable as it relates to cartridge loading.

This is Vinyl 101 and I hope others pay attention.
Dear zieman: +++++ " I routinely change loading with different phono cables. The differences are not subtle. " +++++

as Audiofeil and Atmasphere posted almost always ( nothing is perfect ) the cable resistance value per meter is too low for take in count on cartridge loading and I agree with them.

IMHO what you are hearing is due to own differents cable colorations but certainly not mainly because its cable ( really low ) resistance. As a fact you, like everybody, don't want a high resistance cable where you can loose the signal high frequencies ( between other things ), normally a cable designer almost always works on a very low resistance cable.
Of course that maybe in one of those cables that you already try it its resistance could be really high but that is not the standard, as I told you: we are looking for a very low resistance cable as a rule.

Btw, the other subject that I always support is what Atmasphere posted: don't use the cartridge loading like a tone control/equalizer to compensate for " errors " somewhere in the audio chain.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.
Right, so when was the last time you saw a 5 meter phono cable? Try one with a .25 output MC. Then we can talk about what happens in vinyl 102. I believe I can hear going too low as well as too high. This confirms Atmas measurements.