Stand out phono stages

I have heard the AMR in a great shop and the ARC ref2 at home for a week.

IMO, the ARC ref2 is easily the better and the more musical sounding player. It really is superb, a really transparent and refined set of upper fruencies coupled with the best placement of instruments and effects that floats in a 3d soundstage I have ever heard.

The AMR was designed and in part executed by Thorsten Loesch, a guru of tube DIY people. It has many highly desirable build features not found in most commercial products, e.g., a choke-loaded power supply, true dual mono, etc. Also it has that amazing adjustability for playback compensation, and for cap and resistor loading. I take your opinion seriously, Downunder. Too bad the AMR did not fare better in your opinion. But do you think the difference you heard might have been due to auditioning the AMR in an unfamiliar system, compared to your home system?

Gents, take my thoughts on the AMR with a grain of salt, as it still sounded good. I heard it in the store with unfamilar equipment(horns), however unfortunately you cannot hear everything at home.

I did compare the AMR directly with the Air tight phono and Leben phono. the Air tight was more natural and 3d sounding. The AMR for such an expensive tube unit, was a little more mechanical in the upper frequencies vs the Air Tight
The AMR does have infinite flexibilty, so it should be able to be tweaked to sound better. However, I was really interested in the AMR and it just did not do it for me to investigate further.

Clearly if one can listen to the AMR at home, that is better.

The ARC ref2 OTOH was really good and sounded "musically right". Only thing lacking for me was a slight tonal weight in the bass - however the unit I listened to at home only had 150-200 hours on it. supposed to get more weight at 300-400 hours.

cheers

Has anyone here heard the Airtight ATE-2005 phono stage ??

I have heard the AMR a number of times and it would seem to me Downunder's story is a perfect illustration of dealers (or indeed representatives at shows) not always taking the necessary care to show the gear at its best. In fairness to dealers, it is of course not really possible to build perfect systems around every single component they have in their product range. Especially the observation that the PH-77 was "more mechanical", is a smoking gun, though (no AMR gear sounds mechanical or at least it shouldn't).
The first time, I heard the PH-77 was in a system with a Montegiro Legno table (don't recall the cart), AM-77 amp, Marten Coltrane Momento and Jorma cable loom and it sounded, well, "merely" very good. The most recent session was a system with Dr. Feickert Woodpecker with Lyra cart, AMR-77, Kiso HB1 monitors and selected cabling built by ... Thomas Fast, and that is precisely where the difference lies! Thomas is one of those people that will go any length to ensure the gear he presents can go to the "beauty contest". Matter of fact, Downunder's description of the ARC's virtues will then fit perfectly to the AMR.
Moral of the story: our own system will be decisive in the end.

Btw: in a much more affordable price bracket (EUR 2k), I hope to hear the B.M.C. Phono MCCI soon, supposed to be a dramatic overachiever. Anyone heard it yet?