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Cartridge Loading into Step-Up Transformer

I have read a lot about preamps and phono stages having the ability to put a load resistor in parallel to the cartridge.  Some products have flip switches, others have solderable terminals inside the unit to put in a custom valued resistor and others have a pair of external RCA jacks to put a resistor here.  Mt preamp has the latter.  However, if an external  setup transformer is used into a MM input, what is typically done to accommodate a load resistor?  Is the resistor in parallel with the primary or the secondary?  And is the resistance value typically different for a given cartridge that worked well into an active MC stage vs. a setup?  Any experiences, ideas, suggestions, etc., would be greatly appreciated.
John
jafox

Showing 1 response by folkfreak

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folkfreak
1,349 posts
 
This is a pretty complex and tendentious subject. See for example
http://www.rothwellaudioproducts.co.uk/html/mc_step-up_transformers_explai.html
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/stepup/primer.html

best advice is to work with who ever designed your step up to ensure it matches your cartridge. Some step ups (such as the MFA I use) do actually offer variable “loading” so you can fine tune the response to suit the cartridge and recording but simply adding a resistor in parallel to the transformer can cause problems such as ringing so stick with the methods the step up maker designed 
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