Phono pre "Break-In" process? Necessary?

I have sat in glorious orchestra and opera halls. I have had chamber series seats for years, nearly a decade, working my seats to a position about nine rows back, just left of center. I know what acoustic music sounds like live and what horse-hair plaster walls sound like. I rarely weep at a performance, but in Birmingham's Alabama Theatre on July 3 2008 I had the extreme good fortune to have a first row, just left of center, mezzanine seat for Tom Waits Glitter and Doom. What can I say? It was my only occasion to see Mr. Waits live. Screw stereo reproduction, this was the real thing, flesh & bone. Sorry but, I am yet to be thrilled by the sound of a box of gadgets like I was that night... Was there audible distortions or a smearing of the sound stage? I guess, I was so caught up in the performance that I couldn't have cared less. It got behind the mule!

The time taken to break in a product is directly related to the price and inversely related to the perception of its quality.

r_f,
I am also  fan of  Tom Waits. Do you have a recording of him live?
I know the engineer that recorded Bela fleck and the Flecktones and have the live recording of them in Africa that is truly amazing. 

When you hear music through a distortion-free system, the experience is not subtle. In fact Norm, the reviewer, has told me when he plays Basie at the Sands - he can literally recall the room they were in. The layout was identical and every detail of the performer and audience could be heard as natural as when he was there,

It will recover the original venue in every way. As you can probably tell at this point It is difficult to explain to someone what they are about to hear. Your speakers produce acoustic energy based on an actual "re-enactment" of the air pattern present at the time of the recording. The most important property of the playback is the speed that sound waves are released from your speakers. Sound has 2 properties - pressure and time. The waves flow as if uninterrupted from the stage.

When you system appears to have nothing to do with what you are hearing - then its right. Sound objects are lifted away from the speakers and float in space. The speed is locked at Mach One and there is no sonic signature.
You cannot tell if it is tubes or transistors. The image is 100% stable (same as live) and it comes out of a jet black background.

I wish I had more demo units to send out - people end up keeping them.
I don't know where you are located but I do plan to show at Newport Beach in June. Almost all the editors of top magazines have agreed to see what the fuss is about including 4 of the top movie makers.

Roger

Well, yes but only the live performance anyone could have, Glitter & Doom is on both vinyl (my preference) and redbook CD and is an excellent selection of songs from many (if not all) of the venues in this tour. Two things to keep in mind, Mr. Waits only tours about every seven years or so, and, he is usually very picky about finding nice old opera and concert venues to perform in. His musicians are exemplary as well. If you don’t, you really should own this recording. It is a treat. And it may play very well into what your amp is doing.

Happy Listening!

TLDR (too long, didn't read) ...

I don't know if it was mentioned yet but one of the biggest "break-in offenders" is capacitors.  Some Teflon caps are notorious for taking multiple hundreds of hours and they go through weird stages along the way.  They sometimes get worse before they get better.  I won't get into the why's here (I'm guessing there were contentious statements both for and against, and I don't have time to discuss).

Most capacitors are not like this however and 50 hours 'll do ya fine.  It doesn't hurt to get the manufacturer's take on this.

Jim Hagerman used to sell an inverse RIAA circuit.  I don't know if he still does.  It allowed you to run a CD signal into your phono stage (dropping the gain by ~44dB and inverting the RIAA eq) so you can hear music amplified through it.  50 hours occurs a lot faster when listening to CDs vs. changing 150 record sides ;-)

Of course, if it sounds fine out of the box, it will only get better (one would hope), so you needn't jump through hoops unless you want to.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design