Feasibility Study: Balanced Phono Project - Need help

[Archwn]

Hi everyone. I'm new to the vinyl world. Please be gentle.

Since I've been listening quite a lot through headphones, it is not practical for me to go for something big - like plugging my phones to big amp's phones output. I need something small, simple, with good sound. May be a turntable then a small (RIAA stage + headphone amp) to the phones.

I got an idea when I read about balance system. If I can do it from the front end, It might be good? I 'd love to eleminate all coupling caps and balance system might allow me.

So I begin with the cartridge. it is stereo with 4 pins R RG L LG. I understand that R / RG is the both end of the same coil so the signal on R and RG are perfectly inverted and I can use them for the balance system. The same applies to the Left channel. However, this left me one big question - I need a ground for my balance system and I dont know where it is? Can I use chasis ground as a system ground?

The second question would be the RIAA stage. As I will play around with MC and MM carts, I think I will need both gain stage. I have heard people said MC is good for fet input. and MM is ok for opamp input so I might have fet gain stage for MC (may be something like perl phono) feeding opamp (MM feed directly here) so my system will be like this:-

opamp gain stage > opamp RIAA stage > volume > phones

I dont know what gain should I use for the first stage. For the RIAA stage, what RIAA curve should I use? I mainly pay attention to 80s-90s-present music. What RIAA feedback components should I use according to the curve?

Every comments/thoughts are welcome.

[mickeymoose]

Go to the thread "Simplistic NJFET RIAA" in the "Analog Source" forum for most of your answers.

[atmasphere]

Originally Posted by Archwn

I got an idea when I read about balance system. If I can do it from the front end, It might be good? I 'd love to eleminate all coupling caps and balance system might allow me.

So I begin with the cartridge. it is stereo with 4 pins R RG L LG. I understand that R / RG is the both end of the same coil so the signal on R and RG are perfectly inverted and I can use them for the balance system. The same applies to the Left channel. However, this left me one big question - I need a ground for my balance system and I dont know where it is? Can I use chasis ground as a system ground?

The short answer is, yes, you can.

We've been using this approach in all our phono systems since 1989.