KK/Lundahl SUT's are tasty... I built a CineMag SUT so I could have three windings to cover medium and low output MC cartridges. It is very tasty as well.
Here is what I like about my Piccolo. It has tighter, deeper and cleaner bass response. Bass is the toughest thing to get right in audio. Too much bloat and it ruins the magic. Too little bass and you are always turning up the volume. My Piccolo gets bowed and plucked string bass so natural I figure I need to tip the perfomers before they leave my home.
With my Piccolo I hear less sibilance to vocalists. The sibilance I do hear sounds like I would expect it to be caught by the microphones. It is more natural.
I like the highs better. They seem a little less glaring and a little more effortless.
I also like the fact that my background is quieter! There is absolutely no grain to the gain. It is like a powerful wave that just washes the music over you with no disconcerting after affects.
I think that's due to the overall effect of DCR in any transformer. Its right there mixed into the signal and there is no way to get around it. Literally the quality of the copper wire they use (unless you pay for silver) might be the very thing you can never hide from or ameliorate. I think the sibilance I heard in my Cinemag was directly a result of the copper quality in the windings. To get a different sound I would need them to wind these with a different copper wire.
With my Piccolo the transformer is part of an outboard Bugle Power Supply. I bought mine as a kit from Jack. This is the best 15v power supply I've seen in a long time. And cheap to build as well. I upgraded mine to Panasonic EB power ballast resistors and Pansonic FC power supply resistors. This gives me clean power going into my Piccolo's power supply.
So I am in effect double rectifying my power and that makes for a superb noise floor in the final scheme of things.
I built the Piccolo P/S with Black Gate caps and the ones I selected have noise down 160db.
The total effect is that I never hear my head amp. I only hear the signal and it has less spit, glare and grain than the SUT.
In this case I can see why a great head amp like the Kline cost over 1000 dollars back in the 80's. You need great pieces to make the head amp shine without spot lighting.
Jim doesn't skimp on his design. He uses FET's and these are premounted to the circuit board. He uses zero negative feed back. Most of all he uses Hagerman MOJO to draw out every aspect of the signal without in any way altering the signal.
His circuit does no harm.
I spent almost 500 dollars on my Piccolo. It is the second I built. Both sounded great but this second Piccolo leaves me wanting NOTHING. And as picky as I am that is saying a great deal.
If it were me in your shoes. I would build an SUT and build a Piccolo. That's how I roll. I like having both in my arsenal.
For me, my improved Piccolo is not coming out of my system any time soon.
One final thing I almost forgot to mention is that the Piccolo allows you to switch on the fly between 6 loading resistor options.
For my medium output MC cartridge, I literally load up 6 resistors that help me dial in the sonics of my favorite album labels. I can literally dial in the best resistance load to cover the wide variety of eq curves that were used by labels such as RCA, London, DG, and others. Did you know that very few labels used the RIAA curves? There was a standard, but everyone flew their own colors. My Piccolo covers this for me.
Let us know how your choice works out!
