Hello @Countrypie
Some excellent suggestions here to make sure that what you currently have is operating at peak performance. Once that’s been confirmed, you may (or may not) want to look at some different phono preamps.
I think the Tempest offered by Odyssey is a solid state preamp with a built in phono stage. It would, in essence, replace your Candela and not really be hooked up to it. There probably is no way to adjust the gain on that.
Odyssey offers the Kismet Phono Pre (
https://odysseyaudio.com/kismet-phono-preamplifier/) as a stand alone, highly adjustable tube based phono preamp that would hook right up to your Candela.
I know the Moon you have is a well regarded phono pre, but as Klaus says, it’s about system synergy. It may be that the issue is more about synergy between components than an actual “bad” component.
I’d definitely check to make sure what you currently have is set up right, or no component swap is going to fix that.