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

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.

Al, But I would guess that the capacitance would be even lower if there were no shield. Which was my point, altho I probably should have been more explicit. Geometry is the major determinant of the IC capacitance, but shielding adds to it. I think that is accurate, but I am open to enlightenment if not.

Salectric, It doesn't "figure". The gauge of the wire might make a difference, since any resistance in the ground wire would potentially allow the component to "float" at some tiny voltage above ground, which could potentiate hum, but otherwise, I cannot fathom why the character of the wire would make a difference, assuming copper or silver in the first place. Was there any difference in gauge (thickness) of the conductor? Or is it possible that when you were changing the ground wire, you did a better job making contacts between the two chassis? (That could also have an effect.)