How much difference will a phono stage upgrade make?

Well I'll put my experience out there. .I have a cary sli80 and upgraded my turntable to a vpi clasic 3 witch I really enjoy. .tried some expensive tube phono stages like rogers pa1a and don't think it's worth the asking price.I'm currently using a rega aria and getting the results I was looking for. .with that said the jc3 from parasound is really nice and there are some good prices on used ones as well..best of luck. 

Well I'll put my experience out there. .I have a cary sli80 and upgraded my turntable to a vpi clasic 3 witch I really enjoy. .tried some expensive tube phono stages like rogers pa1a and don't think it's worth the asking price.I'm currently using a rega aria and getting the results I was looking for. .with that said the jc3 from parasound is really nice and there are some good prices on used ones as well..best of luck. 

This is a great thread because I have been wrestling with a phono stage upgrade. I have an Aesthetix Janus Eclipse, with has the Rhea phono built in. The tube rush makes me crazy so I’ve considered going SS to take that out of the equation. It’s interesting that other Rhea owners experience the same issue. Misery loves company. I’ve been sort of locked-in on Herron or Sutherland. The comments are really helping me. Great post. Good luck. 

Keep the post coming, I'm getting lots of useful info.  Thinking about an upgrade myself.  Running a Jolida JD9, vpi classic 2 and ortofon quintet black.  Looking the parasound jc3+ or the jr.  Going to research the puffin.  Thanks for all the post so far.  Good luck on you journey.

papafrgog, I’ve been using an Aesthetix Rhea for over a decade and I bought it used.

I initially struggled with tube rush and I guess that’s why the original owner unloaded it.

I’d tried all sorts of 12AX7s to tame the tube rush, but to no avail.

In the meantime, I tried several other phono stages, including ARC PH7, Pass Labs XP-15, BAT VK-P10SE with Super Pak, plus a few others I don’t recall.

Although all of the above phono stages are very reputable and were very quite in comparison, but none had the magic I was looking for in my system. So I was stuck with the Rhea.

Not to give up easily, I contacted Aesthetix and asked to sell me a set of selected tubes for the V1 and V2 positions (in your case, it’d be V1 and V2 for phono). These Sovtek tubes were very quiet in comparison to all previous tubes that I’d tried, although the tube rush was still audible with my ears a few feet from the speakers, but I could live with that.

However, the Sovtek tubes were somewhat lacking in terms of body and dynamic (the magic I was after). After reading so much about the Gold Lion B759, I took a plunge and replaced the Sovteks in V1 and V2.

Now the body and dynamic are restored, although at the expense of very slightly increased tube rush.

I went even further as to replace every 12AX7 with Gold Lion B759.
Tube rush is slightly audible at listening position (~12 feet away from the speaker plane) at quiet nights with the needle lifted, which is much better than before.

I am pretty content now.

YMMV and happy listening!
P.S. My best buddy has a regular Janus and he replaced all 12AX7s with Gold Lion B759s. He is happy.