Phono stage match for Koetsu

Einstein works well with your cartridge.

http://www.aaudioimports.com/ShowProduct.asp?hProduct=7

The impedance of the Koetsu is pretty low at 5 Ohm so that it should at least electrically match the Shindo preamps (Monbrison, Massetto) which feature a MC input designed for low impedance cartridges. The best people to talk to are Matt at Pitchperfect Audio, Don at Don Better Audio or Jonathan of Tone Imports.

Of course you can always add an external step-up (e.g. Auditorium 23) to any Shindo preamp to allow for a large variety of cartridges. Even a Shindo Aurieges MM with external Cinemag step-ups would be an excellent combo if you are looking at more affordable full function preamps.

In fact, at this level I would always look at matching a high quality step-up to a cartridge first and then running this into a tube MM phono stage.

Thanks for the help. The Einstein is supposed to be a great unit. I am running single ended also, and the SE version is about 5K, so it would be within my budget. I am sure the TT choice would be worth hearing paired with a good line stage.
The Shindo of course would keep me all in one box, and with one less interconnect in my setup. This is desirable, especially the interconnect part. I think this will lead me to checking out the Shindo first, since it would be great to do this with a full function. I have not done any homework on the external SUP transformers. I would think the built in MC SUP in a Masseto would be very good though. It may be time to talk with a Shindo dealer to shed some light on this subject. The Shindo MC gain seems sufficient, so it may come down to the how the built in MC transformer stacks up against reasonably priced external ones. Then of course I am back to needing an extra set of cables for transformer>preamp. Ahh, never easy but always fun.