$3000 Upgrade Dilemma: My Next Purchase


My analog front end is older, but good: Alphason Sonata turntable with Alphason HR-100MCS titanium arm (with Van den Hull silver wiring) and a beautiful sounding Madrigal Carnegie One low output MC (0.28mv) cartridge. It's connected to a Tandberg 3008A preamp w/phono stage and an Electron Kinetics Eagle 2A amp (remember John Iverson?) and finally, Thiel CS2s. Also, for when my wife is sleeping... a Ray Samuels Raptor tube headphone amp and AKG 702s.

Here's my dilemma: I want to take a quantum leap in sound quality, especially in the areas of overall musicality, inner detail, soundstaging and air around the instruments. And, I recently fell in love with the tube/vinyl combo after 30 years of stubborn solid statehood. And, the Tandberg's attenuator is crackling and popping like breakfast cereal again, and I'm tired of wasting money trying to get it fixed. So...

With $3000 to play with in Audiogonland... do I:

1. Buy a superb, quiet outboard tube phono preamp and use the Tandberg as Line Stage until I can replace it?

2. Buy a tube Preamp with a superb built-in phono stage (does one exist?) to replace the Tandberg?

Any suggestions will be very appreciated, especially about specific gear. Keep in mind that the phono stage will need at least 65 dB of gain to drive my cartridge.

Also, does anyone know of a phono stage with two sets of single-ended outputs? I'd love to be able to use one of them to go directly into the headphone amp, bypassing the line stage completely!

Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom and experience.
Ag insider logo xs@2xalonski
The Aesthetix Janus has a high quality, high gain phono stage, excellent line stage, and 2 line outs per channel (both sets allow your choice of RCA or XLR). Used examples periodically turn up on this site at $3,000 to $3500.

Marty
Oops - sorry, but the Janus' lines out follow the line section. The Aesthetix Rhea phono stage (similar $) has multiple lines out as well - but no line section, at all.

Marty
Thanks everyone,

I'm most interested in SwampWalker's suggestion of the VAC Standard LE. I read up on it and it seems perfect! Now to find one...