Need help with Sutherland Ph.D. phonoamp

Thank you, Steve, for the reduction in entropy...I figured it was just a typo but your concern is very much appreciated.

Thanks also for the new thread to puruse. In it, Albertporter says that he has found 1000 ohms to be the magic loading. Perhaps this is a result of using the Io which some consider somewhat dark. Just speculating. Hope he weighs in on this.

I get the message that I need to try some different settings and decide for myself.

John

This preamp is still annoyingly turning off every half hour. So, after about every 1 1/3 of an LP side I need to clean the needle to give it enough noise to reset the clock and keep it going.

I tried the 100 ohm loading but the bass was boomy and the highs suppressed. Right now my settings are 47k and 60 dB and I'm pretty impressed. Will go back to 1k for further comparison. (Cartridge is Koetsu Black.)

Smokester, You are now finding that NO preamp loading "rules" are written in stone. Referring to the thread I directed you to, I state that people tend to ignore or not provide enough consideration to tonearm and interconnect capacitance. Often, the deviations, just as we are discussing, become deviations due to wiring capacitance.

They will, and do, have a MAJOR effect on preamp gain and loading settings.

Who coined the phrase "Your Mileage May Vary"?

Regards, Ed.

Smokester what is the table and arm you are using?

Steve,
I am using an SME 20 with the IV.Vi arm.

As an update, I have found that the PHD kept turning off because the threshold of the "music detector" which controls this was set too high. There is a pot inside which can easily be adjusted by hand and I have it adjusted perfectly now.

I spent Saturday morning going through selected tracks on some reference (auditioning) records which included Holly Cole's "Temptation", Basie's "88 Street (45 rpm)", Billy Holidays "Songs for Distingue Lovers", No Doubt's "Rock Steady", Von Karajan's '63 Beethoven's 9th, Szerygn's Brahms' Violin Concerto (original Shaded Dog), Heifetz' Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (original White Dog, not the reissue) and a few others. Also played the new Mercury reissue of Respighi's "The Birds".

Concluded, still with some slight reservations having to do with a very slight bloom in the bass and some very, very slight harshness in solo violins compared to the best I have had in my system, that this is an excellent phono stage...I still might not have the cartridge loading quite right but just wanted to listen to some music for a while. Imaging was outstanding. It is very clear, undistorted, tuneful in the bass, uncongested with massed strings, and always musical.

What more could you ask for? I am very impressed with this phonoamp.

Regards,
John