MC Cartridges and Elevator

I haven't any experience of those cartridges but have a number of MCs at different price points and have used them with the Accession (MM - there's now an MC version available) and Elevator. There are more than enough settings on the Elevator for all of my MCs and I'm sure these would be suitable for the Benz and Supex models.

Why not borrow an Elevator from the loan scheme here to find out for yourself? 

For my MCs - which include an Ortofon SPU, Zyx R100, Hana EL and Soundsmith Zephyr (actually an MI, but low output) I find the 840 ohm setting for all suits me fine. Maybe I'm not a true "audiophile" because I don't obsess over these things. For a (very) short while I had an MC phono amp with a variable loading knob and for a huge part of the adjustment range there was very little, if any difference. Only when wound right down was there an objectionable squashing of the sound. I can imagine some folk tweaking it for every record, but life's too short for that! Needless to say Graham's phono amps which I was using alongside this nameless piece of kit sounded better! 

Hi Dan, I only have a few MC cartridges but have tried lots of options with their loading from 20 ohms to 47 kilohms using the Elevator EXP and realised that the advice is right to set the loading resistance at 10x the cartridge source impedance or higher. Much higher resistance e.g. 100x was brighter sounding to me or more 'airy' and usually a little louder. I found going down lower than 3x made the sound very matter of fact and a little dull.

Inevitably it depends on personal taste and your system so these are only my opinions. Examples:

* I ran my 8 Ohm Phoenix on 100 Ohms, I tried higher and found 840 was a good compromise to liven up dull records. Now using the 'British' EQ on my Accession does that better so I stick with 100 ohms.

* My 4 Ohm R100L sounds good to me on 100 Ohms. The 30 Ohms EXP option is closest to 10x but I preferred 100 Ohms loading.

*The DL103's 40 Ohms worked well with 1 kilohm loading on the EXP. I thought was a bit dull with 100 Ohms loading.

I used resistor loading plugs to get some in between loadings like 50 Ohms, 200 Ohms, and 300 Ohms. Having made various physical changes I think they were more significant to getting the sound right than fine tuning the loading. Having written that I did enjoy the experimenting with both so please don't let me put you off.

I have a couple of additional questions about the best way to connect the Accession and Exp.... I have a CuSAT50 cable, that is probably much to long in its current placement between the Pre/Power amp and thought I could 'trim' it down to create a pair of short cables for the Accession/Exp.

Where do I get the additional RCA connectors that match the existing ones? Can they be ordered from GSP? 

Thanks

Dan