Gladstone, I like your explicit reasoning. Next thing ya know, you'll be giving us some ridiculous advice like "Buy Maggies and have them modded" or "get an HR-X with a Colibri" or, worse yet, "have Rives design you a room!" Sheesh!!!! :-) Hey Jacob, I will let you know soon about getting out to hear your system!
On the Io issue, Rich, as you may remember, I have owned and reviewed the original Io. I have also owned the Lamm and the Signature Io but that was in my former system. I currently have a Manley Steelehead with another Io Signature (already broken in) arriving tomorrow. I can let you know my impressions of that Io Sig in a few days. My memory of both the Lamm and Io coincides with Rcprince's advice, they are BOTH world class phono stages and most likely lateral moves and your preference will be dependent on a number of things including, room, system synergy (including table and arm), your listening preferences, and, as you know, your ability or desire to tube roll with the Io. I can tell you that the Signature is better than the Io and has Roderstein resistors which, IMHO, outperform the Mills from the original Io and provide greater reliability (see the Aesthetix site to read about Jim's lawsuit with Mills and how defective resistors may have been the cause of some Io owners' concerns over its reliability). Moreover, with the upgraded caps in the Sig it seemed to provide better space, dynamics, subtle detail and extension over the ooriginal Io when I had it in my former system.
OTOH, I really liked the finesse, delicacy and refinement of the Lamm and, over the original Io, lowered noise floor(not to mention the single chassis and lower amount of tubes in the Lamm). However, as people have noted, the single gain setting and single loading setting can be a problem in some systems.
Hope this helps.
