Can good IC's be used instead of dedicated phono's

I would add to the previous comments that I'm not sure if the Signature 2's are shielded. Judging by the photos and description provided at the XLO site for the Signature 3's I don't think the Signature 3's are shielded, which prompts me to raise that point. Lack of shielding could result in noise issues in a phono cable application that would not occur in a line-level application. There's no harm in giving them a try, though.

Optimizing capacitance is particularly important if the cartridge is a moving magnet type, for which manufacturers usually specify a recommended range of total load capacitance ("total" being the total of the capacitances of the cable, the wiring in the turntable and tonearm, and the input capacitance of the phono stage). For low output moving coil cartridges it is less of an issue, but preferably should be kept as low as possible.

Ordinary copper should be fine for the grounding wire.

Regards,
-- Al

SonicBeauty....not at all....sometimes you don't even need a ground wire. Try it without it first (turn the volume down in case you do need it)

The TT ground can be a rather fine wire. It does not need to be heavy at all. 22 gauge or smaller is no problem for a TT ground.
As long as the interconnectes are shielded you can use them

You can use any cable at all for starters. Then work backward. If you have noise with an unshielded cable, then you need a shield. If you have hum, you need to play with grounding. If you have high frequency loss or gain, you need to play with capacitance. Etc.

Your XLO cables are a perfectly good place to start, if your tt has RCA output jacks, as someone else noted. If the phono cable goes direct into the base of the tonearm, then you probably need a cable with a female DIN plug at that end; one DIN plug carries signal for both channels and grounds.

By the way, shielding adds capacitance.

By the way, shielding adds capacitance.

Although, as is usually the case in audio, there are a multitude of variables that affect the bottom line of a given parameter. Blue Jeans LC-1, for example, even though it is NOT specifically intended for phono applications, and even though it is heavily shielded, and even though its cost is very low, has an extremely low capacitance of 12.2 pf/ft.

Best regards,
-- Al