Recommandation for 1:6 1:8 SUT under $5K?

@lewm 

I am 100% against loading transformers on the secondary in any case where it is not needed (ie an output transformer driving a speaker).  In the case of a SUT I find the best results from replacing the 47kΩ on the secondary with a larger value and designing the transformer to work into that light load.  I use 300KΩ on my phono and the measured difference between 47K and 300K is minor but the sonic results make it worth the effort to me.  

My complete take on this can be found at the link below.

https://myemia.com/Loading.html

dave

@lewm 

It suddenly occurred to me that all they have to do is install a resistor in parallel with the primary to get whatever load they want for a given turns ratio. 

Eureka - found a pic - they use secondary loading.

https://www.fidelity-magazine.com/audio-note-io-gold/

@arazmj 

A quick relatively inexpensive thing to try would be to get a pair of RCA spliiters, some screw terminal RCA plugs and a carbon film resistor kit.

This will allow you to quickly and easily play with loading the primary of your S1.  The goal here is to reduce the output of the S1 by about 50% (6dB ) and placing the RCA adapter into the S1 and the tonearm into one of the female sockets will allow the second socket to house The screw terminal jack with a desired load resistor.  This will directly place the chosen resistor across the cartirge in parallel with the primary of the transformer.

This is where the heresy begins.... I would suggest starting with 10Ω which will set the gain of the 1:13 transformer to something more like 1:6 or 1:7 to see if this solves your overload problem.  I do want to be clear that is is not transformer overload that is causing your problem but feeding too high of a signal voltage into your MM stage.  The primary loading, aside from reducing gain will have minimal impact on the sonics of the transformer and the heavy load has a reasonable chance of improving tracking ability.

The resistance value can be played with and while 10Ω should net you 6dB more input overload while aggressively loading the cartridge and 27Ω will split the difference and net you around 3dB of overload headroom and load the cartridge at a small multiple of the 8Ω internal impedance.

dave

For what it's worth, and it isn't worth much, I was wrong when I posted at 8:56AM today that an 18 ohm resistor in parallel with the primary would result in the cartridge seeing a 27ohm load, assuming a 1:10 turns ratio and a 47K ohm phono input.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  And I realized this while driving down a winding country road at sunset today.  The correct answer is about 29 ohms, not 18 ohms. In my own defense, I came up with 18 ohms while lying in bed this morning and did the calculation in my head, too lazy to get up and write down the equations.