Welcome!
I’d love to hear your impression of the Modwright. It is on my very short list of phono upgrades. I suffer from the same “chicken or the egg” syndrome!
After about a week of listening - I love it! However, I might not be the best person to ask since I am upgrading from something far more affordable - Musical Surroundings Phonomena II+. It's a fine piece of gear for the money, of course, but definitely leaves something to be desired. I'm not an audio reviewer, so when I demo, it's mostly trying to see if it just 'feels right' to me in my system based on what I like - big soundstage that feels 3D and a great midrange/vocal reproduction. I mostly listen to Jazz on vinyl, so performance with that genre is top priority for me. However, I have tested things from other genres on it as well. The bass can be a little less defined on the low low end with some music, but I've also heard that this tends to tighten up a bit during the first 100 or so hours of settling, so I'll see how that develops. That tends to be a bit of a weakness for tubes in general from my experience though. Usually really tight, detailed bass is SS's strong suit.
Compared to the Phonomena, the Modwright is better in pretty much every possible way - which I expected given the big price jump. Probably the only thing I wish is that it had a few more options for gain to get a little more granular with fine tuning, but the 64db standard setting works perfectly well as-is, so I'm probably just overthinking it coming from the Phonomena that let you fine tune a little more. The soundstage is wonderful and really does a good job enveloping me in the room. There have been a few moments where the hair has stood up on my arms or I've almost been moved to tears by various things I've run through it - and it's not even completely settled just yet since it was brand new from the factory. I am using the stock tubes on it, but I've heard from others that it gets even better with some tube upgrades as well, so I may do some experimenting with different tubes in the future - which is one of my favorite things about tube gear!
I had this and the WhestTHREE signature on my short list. I couldn't get a demo unit of the Whest (it appears they've stopped making that model, so dealer stock is whatever is left now) but doing a lot of asking around I got the impression that it definitely had more of a SS signature to the sound - which isn't a bad thing, but the Modwright just felt like a better fit for me. After the first week, I definitely feel like I made the right choice.
