low output mc: noise free listening possible?

Dear Mikelavigne, - just as a further information: the Lyra Olympos running in Syntax' system has far more output than 0.17mV.
More likely 0.3 mV.
Does the Olympos you own indeed feature less gain than your A90 ?
I am really curious, as the 2 Olympos' I am familiar with (both serial # higher than 50 ), are much higher output ("louder"...) than the FR-7fc with its 0.2 mV.
Are there different versions of the Olympos around ?

I have a Transfiguration Temper that puts out .2mv. I'm running it into a Hagerman Piccolo step up that boosts it by 26db, which then feeds a Hagerman Trumpet boosting another 44db gain. I find that the Piccolo is extremely quiet and that I get no more noise from my Temper than I did using my old Dynavector with 2.5mv output.

As long as you have a quiet step up device you should not have any more noise than you would with a higher output cartridge, but all things considered a solid state phono stage will be quieter than tubes, and may also provide enough gain to let you avoid a separate step up alltogether.

But then you would be missing that tube magic :-)

My experience has been that low noise is possible with tubes as well as transistors. You can do it by going fully differential. Contrary to Herman's comment balanced operation in fact offers you lower noise and immunity to artifacts in the interconnect cables (the real myth is 'balanced only benefits you if you want to run long cables'- the truth is it was devised to eliminate cable artifacts, which led to its being handy for long distances as well).

The thing that I keep running into is that noise is not the last word in reproduction. It can mask detail, so you want to keep it down, but I find that the quieter systems often lack detail for other reasons. There are a lot of things that can mess up a phono signal, so keep in mind that no single thing is a panacea that will work in all cases. Its the same as it ever was: YMMV...