I ended up buying Russ's Soundsmith MMP4. I held off offering any opinions on it because... It comes in a low-gain version Soundsmith calls "standard" and a higher gain version one of his distributors chooses to stock instead. The one I bought turned out to be the higher gain version and, to my ear, the whopping high gain caused kind of a V-shaped EQ curve when used with my standard output MM carts.
I sent the MMP4 to Soundsmith to have it converted to "standard" gain. Got it back a few days ago and now I can say it is an EXTREMELY accurate, transparent, dynamic, "open" and refined sounding phono stage. I may even prefer it to my Jolida, even after the tweaks I found to get the most out of my Jolida. It will definitely be a tough call. I recently tried and sent back several other solid-state phono stages. Nothing else came close to this in the price-range. So yes, Soundsmith MMP4 also highly recommended! Definitely get the "standard" low gain version unless you'll be using it with a high-output moving coil or moving magnet with unusually low output. I haven't tried powering it with batteries as Russ recommended yet, but I bet it would sound insanely smooth and I may get around to trying it one of these days. Very, very satisfied with it as-is though. Can't imagine how the MMP3 with super-premium parts quality for $100.00 more would sound. The MMP4 is probably the best phono stage I've heard in my system yet... and not the most expensive. May not seem like a huge bargain at $300.00 for moving magnet only... But, it's worth every penny IMO.
Here's a rip done with the Soundmith and the slightly bright, but reasonably revealing AT440MLa. I keep grabbing that cart to evaluate mods or equipment, even though it's not my favorite as far as tone goes. But, it's about the most revealing cart I have...
http://www.4shared.com/file/8mi0cLOl/08_-_TIJUANA_TAXI.htmlEDIT: Naw... After more listening, I still prefer the Jolida, particularly after substituting the silver mica capacitance loading plugs for the internal cheap ceramic loading capacitors. The Soundsmith still has a bit of a V-shaped EQ to my ear. Not bad, no obvious harshness or coloration like some of the other solid-states I auditioned. But, it seems to favor the frequency extremes a bit much for my taste and it doesn't really cut it with the 440MLa. I would spend $400.00 on a Jolida instead of $300.00 on the Soundsmith. I'll probably end up reselling the Soundsmith.