Reasonably priced 2K Phono Preamp?

I love my BAT VK-P5 which retails for $2k, but can be had for $1200 used. I compared it in a long term audition to the $5000 Aesthetix Io and when maintenance costs were factored in, I could not justify the $3k for such a small improvement. The Io was better, but not by that much.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and recommend something from space tech laboratory found at space-tech-lab.com. ive never heard their phono stages but i recently bought a little tube preamp line stage from them for a temporary piece just until i found THE preamp i really wanted. well...this little preamp was $300 new and blew the DOORS off my audio research sp9mkII and my morrison ELAD which gets such astonishing reviews at audioreview. i did an a/b comparison with all of them and i sold everything but the space-tech. the rest of my system consists of a vt100mkII, 777es, acoustat m3s, oracle delphi and the space tech keeps up with all of those pieces. it's really outstanding and i'm looking in to their phono stages right now. i can barely wait! i'm frothing.

Here is one that might be a better choice. The Phono Stage from Plinius called M14, which retails at USD3,450 but could be obtainable at around half of the price in used market. This unit is clean, quiet, detailed, and extremely dynamic, plus a gorgeous midrange. And it is built like a tank, with a net weight of 26 lbs. Arthur

KLYNE AUDIO ARTS

Klyne 7 is definitely the way to go. Very flexible with
Gain/impedence/high-frequency contour adjustment. Enough
gain for even 0.2mv output and very quiet. Sounds amazingly
good. It actually beats Vandetta when my friend made the
side by side comparison.