piezoelectric pre phono

[studiorp]

Hello all, tonight I have discovered a thing that could be many inetersting : I have an old Sony Hst-388 solid-state receiver with 8 track player, all in one.
All works but the pre phono nothing, only a very little sound from a nonrmal mm pickup.
I thought that were broken some pieces inside, instead after many check with oscilloscope and other equipment I have discovered that this amp works only with piezo pickups, but the thing more incredible for me has been when for a my mistake, I have inserted the line out from a cd player into phono rca. Now normally when this happen, the sound is distorted, but in this case the sound was pratically the same of a inverted riaa. It's possible ?

[dubcutter89]

Yes, that's normal.
Cristall Pickups already have quite high output voltage and they are sensitive to the recorded amplitude rather then velocity
(as mm or mc pickups), and therfore don't need RIAA correction (ok, there's a high freq attenuation but not as much...)
If you have a cristall pickup it should also be possible to connect it to line input of a normal mixer...

Lukas

[studiorp]

Could be possible use this system for record cutting ?

[Angus McCarthy]

Any amplifier can be used to drive a cutting head - provided it matches the impedance and has enough headroom to cut at a listenable level without distorting.