Budget phono stage- advice appreciated

Musical Surroundings Phonomena. Does absolutely nothing wrong in my pinion. Probably will be somewhat too noisy for extremely low output cartidges, but then, so are most phono stages...Anyway, you ought to hear my Phonomena, with my Lo4. But, it will COMMAND your attention with musical invlovement, Jeff, so you might want to get a less involving stage. I get very easily distracted by music while I'm working, and of course would never consider using a vinyl source as a "casual" medium for music at any time. A casual, hands free medium with less performance already exists: FM radio.

Mjm forgot to mention how much the Black Cube compresses the dynamic range. The E.A.R. 834P is in a different league, being twice as expensive as the Black Cube, at least in my country. I thought that the price range of the phono preamp in question in this thread should be below $400.

In support of Carl, the German Audiomeca agent used a Musical Surroundings Phonomena to preamp an Audiomeca J1 linear tracking turntable (a very serious turntable) at the latest Frankfurt High End exhibit. It sounded very musically involving with the cartridge they were using.

i found the phonomena a bit dry for my taste, but mebbe it was my linn kairn pro? i had an earlier kairn (w/o slimline-version of the brilliant power-supply) - its built-in fono-stage was nicer than the phonomena, even tho the slimline p/s in my later kairn had better sound on cd & tuner. (btw, carl, you can get *excellent* sound from a good tuner, if the station is uncompressed, & you have a decent signal). in defence of the phonomena, tho - it had *no* problem w/noise, being used w/a 0.18mv mc cartridge. i replaced the phonomena w/a pentagon p-3 which is a *lot* nicer, imho. but, it is ~3 times the price. fortunately for me, no one in the usa knows this product, so it dint cost me much more than the phonomena.

I concur with Mjm and Slawney. The 834P is in an entirely different league and a steal even at retail. I've owned many phono stages over the years, most recently a Sonic Frontiers SFP1 and a Joule Electra OPS1 which the EAR beats. Harry Pearson was quite impressed with it. Yes, it's a bit over your budget, but can be had used with a volume control for around $500-550. So if you don't need a preamp for anything else in your office system it is a very reasonable way to go and so much better than the other offerings here. Unfortunately, you may have to wait a bit to find a used one, but it will be worth the wait for a guy who actually has a turntable in his office! Good luck and enjoy.