[isaacrivera]

I gave my father a VPI Classic Companion turntable for his birthday gift. I think it may have been the last one they made before they removed it from their tables currently in production. Now he's on the phone and we are trying to figure out the phono preamp's settings for the Grado Companion 1.5mv MM cartridge that comes preinstalled in the tonearm. Does anyone know what loading and gain settings to use on a phono preamp for this cart?

Thanks!

[neobop]

Hi Isaacrivera,
This is an intermediate output and it's advertised to work in either a MC (due to low inductance) or MM input.  Although gain varies from one preamp to another,  MM is usually around 40dB and MC around 60dB.  Considerations might be overloading a MC stage or too little gain from a MM stage.  It probably won't overload a "decent" MC stage and whether it has enough output for a MM stage depends on the system.

I would guess that optimal resistance setting would be between .5K and 10K ohms, but that's a wild guess based on other Grados with a different output.   The implication here is good results at 100 ohms:
http://vpiindustries.com/table-companion.htm

neo

[JackD]

This cartridge looks to be a modern version of the Signature Series of cartridges from the mid-80's that included the MCZ, XTZ and TLZ. Those were all "designed" to work at 47k though in some systems they sound better in the mid 20's. The best you can do is experiment from about 23k to 47k and see what sounds best to him.  I would think that somewhere between 45 and 50db gain would be about right. 

[isaacrivera]

Thanks for your advice guys.