No head-to-head in the archives. Anyone upgraded and care to comment?
3 paydays in June 
BillEpstein,
The following thread [1] was a bit of help to me in this evaluation. In particular, I'd recommend mgalusha's review of the Cornet mentioned in the thread.
If I was doing this again, I'd go straight for the Cornet. I haven't heard it, but the Bugle was *very* fun to build and extreamly well designed. From reading the reviews, I suspect the Cornet would be the same in terms of fun, but better in terms of audio.
Plus the ability to roll tubes to complement this to your current gear / tastes is quite nice

I've recently upgraded my phono preamp from a Bugle to a Decware ZP-2. The Decware is a *great* phono preamp, but not 10x better which is a reflection of the difference in price.
The Bugle for me for the money is impossible to beat. In building mine, I left some random notes [2] that may be helpful if you move on the Bugle. Regardless, however, I don't think you'll be disapointed in whatever you choose.
--eric
[1]
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=13061&highlight=bugle+cornet[2]
http://potlach.org/2004/08/preamp/