Stand out phono stages

I sold my Allnic H-3000 to move to the Whest Audio MC REF V MK4. The Whest is SOOO much better! The Allnic is just far too smooth like the other phono units in their range.

I suppose if you are into tubes it's a good buy, but it 'covers' over too much for my liking. I like a more realistic sound - wanna hear everything. I wrote a mini-review of the MC REF V Mk4 here a while back. I still haven't heard anything as good. I heard some very 'romantic' units but none so revealing.

Apparently the US distributor has been dropped and you can now buy Whest Audio direct with a full 5 year warranty. Best part...you can buy the B-graded units in 115vac! It was one of the things that I wanted to do when I was living in CA.

07-14-11: Dcarol
I sold my Allnic H-3000 to move to the Whest Audio MC REF V MK4. The Whest is SOOO much better! The Allnic is just far too smooth like the other phono units in their range.

Hi Dcarol. That is a most interesting SS option. I see elusivedisc has them in stock...$20K...yowsa...pretty pricey. I do wonder how it stacks up against Pass Labs XP-25 which is close to half the price...I saw your mini review here:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1292086567

Definately food for thought, but I don't see how a demo would be possible. Not sure I have the stomach to drop $20K w/o hearing on in my system first. Thanks for your input.

Chris

I don't often participate in these forums, but would like to weigh in on the comments made by fellow Audiogoners, on the AMR PH-77

I purchased it late last year, and had many wonderful listening sessions with it. To say that an AMR product is "mechanical" is not entirely correct, as the entire Reference 77 range has one of the most natural tones I can find in the market

But, Karelfd said it best, that the decisive decision to buy anything is the fit into your own system

I am happy to say that the PH-77 fitted into my system like a glove, and I have 3D images in rock solid positions, while still producing the fluid continuity that tubes are best for ... rock on ... this is definitely a keeper

The PS Audio GCPH is a great performer for the money. I performed some minor mods by encasing the toroidal transformer with a 1-1/2" strip of lead and gluing small strips of lead on any IC's and caps.

Very quiet with my Audio Technica 33EV MC cart. The balanced XLR's sound better than unbalanced.

I have owned the Einstein The Turntable's Choice phono stage for the last four years and have been quite happy with it. It easily beat both the hotrodded Vendetta SCP2T and the Blowtorch which I had previously owned. About two years ago, I began to hear rumblings about a phonostage from a Greek company Ypsilon, the VPS-100. About a year ago, there was an extremely positive review by Michael Fremer. Again, I am a fossil and tend to move very slowly on these things. Last night, a friend helped me install the VPS-100 in my system. It is seldom that when you install a new piece the improvement is so major as to be instantly obvious even when the unit is cold. This is by far the best phonostage that I have heard by quite a wide margin. For context, I use a Rockport Sirius with an Ortofon A90.