What do the two of you who worked for Stanton think of cartridge loading by changing the capacitance and/or resistance on the phono inputs? On the former, you can shorten the cables, change the caps, or use jumpers on multi-cap models. And on the latter, a stereo 100kohm adjustable pot instead of the 47kohm resistors has been recommended. Thoughts?

I know Stanton says to use 275pF/47kohms and Shure says to use 250pF, but in the case of the 680ELII/eV3 I've found it needs at least 450pF to sound smooth. Yet it's still rolled off up top as predicted by the math. The 500Emk2, on the other hand, seems to do very well at 200-225pF: smooth and extended. Is the 275pF spec just for the “factory calibrated” tips and worthless the rest of the time?

And how do you feel about companies like Ortofon who have such vague recommended loading for their non-MC carts of like 200-500pF...as if it makes no difference when in fact it totally changes the response. Is this just for marketing reasons? So they don't scare off people into thinking their phono stage won't work? I find most people who bash them have never heard them properly loaded or only heard the over-massed DJing cantilevers' FIM distortion that almost universally gets erroneously attributed to the phono preamp overloading.

There's also a long thread on this subject on vinyl engine I'd be interested in your opinions on:

http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/vi...=asc&start=300