My hana el sounds its best at the recommended load of 400 ohms or close to that. Its currently hooked up to the Jensen sut which presents a 430 ohm load. Also perfect for my denon 103. My other sut is a rothwell with an effective load of 100 ohms, perfect for my other mc cartridges such as my goldring eroica lx and ortofon quintet bronze. I only use 47k ohms for my mm cartridges such as my 2m bronze or my om10 super. However, my phono preamp is of course currently set to mm at 47k ohm to accept the sut input.
A question of loading...
I have just replaced my aging tube preamp with a new model. When I was using my older model with tube phono stage, I would run my Lyra Kleos and other MC cartridges with a load of 750 ohms. So, I assumed that with my new tube phono stage, which also utilizes a transformer in the phono stage and is also built into my new preamp, that the same cartridge loading would apply. I listened to the Kleos for about a week with this loading, and frankly, while it was fine, I wasn’t bowled over. Tonight I decided to experiment, so the first thing I did was to run the cartridge straight in, with no loading plugs. WOW, the increase in overall musicality and soundstage width was eye opening! Lesson learned is that not all gear is going to react the same when it comes to cartridge loading, particularly if there is a transformer involved and even if you are using the same cartridge from one phono stage to the next! An eye opener, anyone else experience something like this?