Don's preamp has gotten the volume of acclaim it deserves but I'm here to toss a thank you Don's way for his Custom Phono Stage. The basic unit is for MM cartridges but if you desire Don will do internal transformers for MC step up support. I'm pretty sure he has only built a small handful of these but for those who don't need tons of features this is a super sounding unit. I was swayed by a friend who's opinion I trust who has Don's preamp. With about 6 months of use, this really works for me.
I come from living with only MM phono support for years but own a couple of nice MC carts (Lyra Delos and AT ART9) that I boost with Bob's Devices Sky 20 SUT. I really have liked the approach of using a SUT into a good MM stage. The base PH16 kit from Vacuum Tube Audio (tubes4hifi.com) that Don starts with is actually a step up for me in that the kit provides very flexible load options for really dialing in the sound. Don was great help in making recommendations for me based on the carts I use.
Like Don's SP14 preamp, the Custom Phono Stage can be ordered with a variety of parts upgrades and I did pretty much all of them along with a cherry wood case. The cost was about $1,200. Bare bones it can be had with some parts improvements for about $995. I feed this into a Linear Tube Audio MZ2 preamp, then on to a LTA ZOTL40 amp. All tubes, baby!
After delivery, I upgraded the 6922 main tubes with NOS Telefunken ECC88s I had laying around and I'm thrilled with the sound.
