Ortofon Per Windfeld Load Impedance?

At one time we used this forum as a learning tool.Now we have someone like Zieman come on board,make statements without basis and tries to take jabs at others whom are much more knowledgeable.Fact is the only white paper Z is familiar with is hanging on a roller in his bathroom.Or is it his outhouse??

Jloveys,

I will have an opportunity this weekend to play around with a friends Tron Seven. Another mutual friend has it while the owner is out of town. The "agenda" for this weekend is tube rolling. My friend has a big selection of 12AX7s as well as the other tube (can't recall the exact type) which is roughly the equivalent of a 12AU7. I will be able to contribute a Telefunken ECC803S to the experiment. The friend who is now playing with the phonostage has had it in his possession before and really likes this phonostage (used with either a Lyra Helikon or Transfiguration Orpheus)>

I read your comment, above, about loading for the Allaerte cartridge. I can understand that the manufacturer has loaded the secondary of the transformer feeding the active stages of his phonostage optimally (one needs to dampen the transformer ringing), but, to me, there is room to optimize the loading of the cartridge by choice of the proper resistor in parallel across the primary. My own phonostage (Viva Fono) also has a transformer at the input. I have experimented with loading across the primary and have found that it makes a difference. The difference is not as dramatic as changes in loading in my solid state phonostages, but, there is a difference. The high numberic value specified by Allaerte suggests that it should not be loaded down very much (good thing given its extremely low output), so I can see how no loading of the primary works for you, but, I am a bit skeptical about the universal claim that loading would not make a difference with this phonostage.

The owner of the Tron Seven is also an owner of a Tron Jubilate amp. The designer has also said a lot of things to this owner about how performance of the amp has been optimized, but frankly, the amp sounded like crap to me in several different systems. It was only after we did some tube rolling, discouraged by the designer, that the amp sounded pretty good. I am just a bit skeptical about things the designer of this gear says (he also had a lot of excuses for the amps multiple power supply failures).

Larryi : thank you for your comment. The tron seven designer encouraged me to do tube rolling with this unit. I tryed first NOS Mullards 12AX7 wich improved the sound but a little too lean to my taste. The best results are with NOS Telefunkens 12AX7 in my system. The output buffer 12AU7 is already fit is a NOS GE USA. I will be interested in your week end discoveries. I will also try to put a resistor to achieve the 845 ohms for the A.Finish. Who knows, it can improve even more the sound, but this cartridge/phono couple is made in heaven.
Best regards.

Jloveys,

Perhaps you should ask Allaerte about the right resistor to achieve proper dampening of the cartridge. I bet the value is different from the 845 ohms specified, given that the primary of the transformer represents a load different from that of other types of phonostages so the proper value might be different. If Tron supplies you information on the turn ratio, etc. of the transformer, I bet Allaerte can give you some suggestions.

The other alternative is to just experiment with different values. This should be relatively easy to implement. Just solder in a resistor between the hot and ground tabs on the back side of the RCA jack going into the Tron.

By the way, if the Mullards sound too lean in your setup, I would bet that the ECC803S would be EXTREMELY lean to you (a good thing, perhaps, given the CRAZY price for 803S' these days).

If you don't have Tele ECC803S in hand it is an extremely expensive price for an experiment ! The classic ECC803 are wonderful here. Have fun and happy listening.