Resistive vs capacitive loading

See the following:

http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html

The bottom line: For a low output mc, proper resistive loading is much more important than capacitive loading.

And yes, those phono preamps that provide adjustable input loading will typically provide adjustment of resistance only. That is in large part because capacitance is heavily influenced by the external cabling.

For a moving magnet cartridge, where capacitance may be important, if need be you can add a small capacitor for each channel using y-connectors at the preamp inputs, with a small capacitor of appropriate value soldered to an rca plug, plugged into each y-connector (there are kits that provide an assortment of these, with various capacitance values, or you can prepare your own). If you need to reduce capacitance, your only alternative is likely to be shortening the interconnect cable between the turntable and preamp, or using a lower capacitance cable type.

Regards,
-- Al

Dear Chris: +++++ " My observation is that most phono preamps have only the feature for adjusting resistive loading but not capacitive loading. " +++++

this is because almost no one phono stage designer cares about MM cartridges and in MC ones the capacitance has no significant effect like the resistive one.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Thank you very much for your reply (Al + Raul).

Chris