Shelter cartridge loading

[Frank McCrea]

Hello,
I recently purchased a Shelter 501 and I'm about to start experimenting with cartridge loading.
The Shelter manual states the DC resistance at 12 ohms, and suggests the recommended load impedance as follows.

Step up trans within 20 ohms.
Head apmplifier within 100 ohms.
High gain EQ amplifier within 47K ohms.

I will be using a (47K ohm) Hagerman Cornet phonostage with some Lundahl LL9206 step up transformers set at the 1:10 ratio with 20db's of gain.

According to the specs above I could go down to within 20 ohms. I've done a bit of reading in the archives and it seems a lot of people are loading the 501's at around 100 ohms with various step up transformers.

Can some of you kind folks tell me where you are loading yours, and maybe comment on the differents in sound above and below the 100 ohm norm.

Thanks, Frank

 

[ericpeters]

I'm running it at 10 ohm (ortofon T20) and it sounds very nice (A lot better than my Sony SACD and also a lot better than my other cartridge AT-OC9ML )

 

[KevinHeem]

I've been playing with the loading on my Shelter 501 MKII. I'm using a Pearl II phono stage and when I bought the cartridge I put in a 150Ω resistor in...it's closest thing I had to the recommended 100Ω, I figured it was close enough. So I got some 100Ω resistors for another project and thought I better try them with the Shelter/Pearl and there was an improvement. What surprised me is when I decided to parallel a second 100Ω resistor, at 50Ω there was a significant improvement.