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Help me pick a phono preamp

Here's my rig-mmf7 tt with denon dl 160 cart, 211 tube mono amps, tube pre. now using a consonance pm 6 phono pre,not bad time to upgrade it. I want to keep it under 1k, and have been reading alot about the dynavector p75, ear, graham slee, lehman black cube, musical surroundings phonomena, and sim audio. I am not sure about going with a tube phono pre, because of the tube amps and preamp. may be too much tube. Any opinions on a good choice for my system? thanks.
cooch
cooch OP
81 posts
 
have a herbie's mat, and just got the cart. the cart stays for now
cooch OP
81 posts
 
have an eroica cart, but needs retipping
buconero117
2,311 posts
 
Go for broke, the VAS Citation I pre amp, every control you need together with all the old record curves. Check it out. I own one and have tried it up against EAR and ARC units with the VAS a clear winner.
cooch OP
81 posts
 
the vas looks very nice, over the budget tho
inna
5,245 posts
 
There are so many choices for under 1k used. But I think, and you said it, that the first step is to decide whether to go all tube or not, or it depends. You will hear different opinions. I myself do not deal with tubes in phono preamps at this price point. I believe that you really need to spend thousands and chose carefully to make it right. Probably all the phono stages that you mentioned would be quite good, but they all will sound like junk compared to,say,LAMM. If I were you I would begin upgrading from the source, that's from the turntable.
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