Phono Preamp price range $2000-$4000

Anyone have thoughts on the Whest Audio PS.30RDT or Pass Labs XP-15? Both are just under the $4000 threshold.

I had a Whest PS.30 before the Herron. I preferred the Herron for a variety of reasons.

Solid state? Look into something by Avid, or a Musical Fidelity kW if you can track one of those down.

I agree with Chayro that the Linn Linto is a very good solid state unit. I find it lively and engaging in a way that is not that common with a lot of solid state gear. The loading is fixed at a value that works well with a lot of different cartridges, so I would not be that particularly concerned about that aspect of the design. However, if one does have a cartridge that sounds excessively sibilant and bright, and if one hopes to tame this behavior by additional loading (meaning a LOWER value of resistance in parallel) perhaps something else should be selected.

I like the top end Naim phonostage for solid state as well. This is also a lively sounding unit. My only concern with the Naim is that a friend of mine had problems with static buildup somewhere in the analogue front end that would cause an occasional loud pop; for some reason this only happened when using the Naim phonostage and it required rebooting the Naim stage which would shut down from the pop (grounding the turntable bearing and arm did not cure this problem).

Thank you all for suggestions, i will look to those units very well. Small concern, are most people buy tubes or solid state phono ?

And any opinion for Conrad Johnson TEA2 ?