Best resistors for use in phono stage?

BTW values are entirely dependent on the specific cartridge; you are creating the load which interacts with the reactive components of that particular cartridge, windings, etc to produce the most linear output. It has (almost) nothign to do with the phono stage

Some like no added loading at all.  Jonathan Carr, the designer of Lyra cartridges advocates no added loading, provided that the downstream electronics can withstand the ultrasonic peak that will be passed through without overloading.  In that sense, the phono stage does matter.  That overload can also come from RFI that is picked up by the cartridge and the phono cabling.   A friend had a preamp that had a fairly bad problem with noise (not hum or powerline noise) which he asked me to help him alleviate.  I could tell that it was RFI being turned into audible noise.  When we checked the loading of the phono stage, it turned out that the manufacturer default setting was 100k (i.e., very little loading), and when we switched to 1k, the noise went away without much other change in the sound.

If anyone really wants to understand resistor

noise check out the public docs from LIGO-

the Laser Interferometer Gravititational Wave Observatory.

They had to deal with noise levels far lower than what

is found in a phono stage. In particular search for LIGO

Resistor Current Noise Measurements.