John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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OK, everybody, why don't you tell me what your favorite cartridge is, and let's find its optimum capacitive loading according to the cartridge maker? Then let's see how close we are with my 'one capacitance fits all' solution.
We can do the same with the noise of a 'one IC fits all solution' and your phono cartridge as well.
 
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Yes he did. He did call us unwashed amateurs 'pitchfork wielding villagers'. But it's been some time.

jan

I am not offended by any of these descriptive words.
I would however by such a compilation: “perfumized professionals Wallstreet money raisers”


I completely distrust comments that uA bias currents in MC can have noticible magnetic effects - there is lots of air, usually fully saturated pole pieces, hi coercivity magnets giving near free space incremental permeability for any material within many times the diameter of the tiny moving air coils

My Denon DL-103 starts pulling noticeably over a suspended chain made of steel paper clips from a distance of 30mm (from tip) in all directions.

George
 
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If you have a non-linearity in your magnetics DEMAGNITIZE them. (And if you believe that it demagnitizes them I have a deal on a bridge for you). Keith Johnson and I had a good laugh about that. What it will do is magnetize (if the signal is strong enough) the armature of the coil windings. Whether that will have an effect is questionable but since its practiced with the cartridge off the disk its not happening with the system in alignment. You would also expect the drive to make an audible output from the device. The few times I observed the practice I heard nothing.

I have experimented with passing a current through the windings of an MC cartridge while playing. At the time I thought it improved the sound. I may have been fooling myself. . . It was about 1 mA and the cartridge was a Lyra Parnassus. Give it a try if you can and are willing to. Its risky for major pops needless to say.
 
Then, for it, I would recommend a low cap phono cable of maybe 15pf/ft.

Indeed, but therein begins the problem. You'll get ~50pF from the cable and the connector, maybe 10-20 more from other wiring in series (e.g., inside the tonearm, inside the preamp). So with 100pF input capacitance, you're probably OK. But, take a FET input pre or, worse yet, a tube unit with a high mu input tube (very commonly a 12AX7), and suddenly you're at 2-3 times that. It's exacerbated in preamps with switchable multiple phono inputs because of the extra wiring (which is often NOT low C).

Thus my question about the actual input capacitance. It's a pity that this is so rarely specified.
 
The added input capactance, besides the 100pf to ground, is the input capacitance of a high feedback IC especially made to compete with the AD797 in overall performance.

Plus wiring, traces... that's why it would be nice if preamp manufacturers actually specified input capacitance as measured at the input plug. As well, it would be nice to provide easy loading adjustment options. The user can either do it by the numbers or do it by ear.

Wasn't there a pre from some decades back called Klyne which had that sort of flexibility?
 
I have experimented with passing a current through the windings of an MC cartridge while playing. At the time I thought it improved the sound. I may have been fooling myself. . . It was about 1 mA and the cartridge was a Lyra Parnassus. Give it a try if you can and are willing to. Its risky for major pops needless to say.
Hmmm, I use the LT1358. "somewhat excessive current noise for MM" amongst other criticizsms were flung at the poor little opamp. But I like the sound and many others do too.
 
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Scott, you misunderstood what I posted.

JCX was pointing to the excess noise created by the bias current in the cardridge, which you agree with me, is nonsense.

I still think you mis-understand the technical definition of excess noise.

On JCX's point about the "heavy bias bjt input current noise flowing in the MM Z creates more Vnoise than the 797 vn" let me first straighten out a semantic point. The noise produced by current flowing through the MM Z is called excess noise, not current noise. From analogy with what is measured in real life resistors, I would expect a wire wound resistor made with defect free copper wire to have exceedingly small excess noise in the uA region we are talking about.


The noise produced by current flowing through the MM Z is not excess noise, it is just another noise source. 2uA has about .8pA/rt-Hz, this times a 1k Z is an extra .8nV/rt-Hz of ordinary noise (with nominally a flat spectrum). It has nothing to do with the already too much thermal noise of the resistance or the voltage noise of the op-amp. The same 2uA produces only 2mV of DC voltage, excess noise does not typically show up before there are volts across the resistance and it has a 1/f spectrum. The paper I linked is an excellent overview of the theory.
 
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One possible issue with even small DC currents through the phono cartridge happens in some older turntables with muting switches across the signal lines. Pop! Pretty much all changers, like Duals, PE's, etc have muting, and so did B&O and others. DIY'ers can defeat this, but a commercial design would need to allow for it (I'd guess).

Thanks,
Chris
 
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