Is it possible for a record to be too loud?

A moving coil phono section that overloads with 1mV from the cartridge is a phono section with poor overload characteristics, FWIW.

To further what Diggory has said, in the cutting process, it is impossible to overload the cutter system. The dynamic constraints exist in playback only. It is the engineer's job to understand what can be played back easily and what cannot.

However I have a copy of the LP in question and it plays fine without compression or mistracking (Triplanar and a Grado Sonata). This suggests that your setup is not optimized- the mechanical resonance of the arm and cartridge together should be between 7 and 12 Hz, else you can have mistracking problems.

Another thing that can contribute to this issue is cartridge loading. With moving coil cartridges the effect of loading occurs at Radio Frequencies. However if your preamp is sensitive to RF the effect of loading can be dramatic, and you have described what it can sound like if there is a loading problem.

Atmasphere,
It surely cannot be true. Perhaps you or Al can elaborate, but overloading is a function of the cartridge's output AND the phono stage's gain/sensitivity setting, isn't it? Theoretically, you could probably overload with a low output MC cart if you have a gain mismatch large enough. From your post, it sounds like you can only overload with MM carts.

The issue is can a cartridge of 1.05 mV or so overload a phono section set up for a low output moving coil cartridge.

1.05mV is about 6 db more than 0.5mV which is considered low output. That represents a doubling of voltage from 0.5mv to 1.05mV.

If that 6 db is making a difference in the overload of the phono section its overhead is poor. That is the long and short of it. In our phono section which works with 0.2mV, it cannot be overloaded by a high output 5mV cartridge.

55db is on teh low side as low output moving coil phono sections go; we have 60 db (I am of the opinion that you don't need that much gain if your circuits are low noise).

So I really think that you need to look at loading and the setup of the cartridge in the arm- its very likely that some other factor has been overlooked. IOW I am sure you are hearing something but overload of the phono section isn't (or shouldn't be) it.

500uV is 0.5 millivolts.

Overload is 31 db above that. That would be about 17.75 mV at the input at the time of overload.

Most preamps have a volume control at the input of the line section. This makes it impossible to overload the line section without also playing the system very very loud.

So really if this is not a problem on all LPs, the possibilities are a problem in setup or a defective pressing. My pressing of the LP in question is fine but that does not mean all of them are OK.

Playing the LP on another system might be one way to find out...