Nandric, I am relying upon my memory of what was available to audiophiles of the 1970s. The Mark Levinson pre-preamplifier was nothing but a separate phono gain stage that did not "do" RIAA equalization; all it did was to add gain to the output from a low output MC cartridge. This, in fact, was Mark Levinson's very first commercial product, I think. The product filled a niche in the market, because there were very few alternative ways to amplify the output of an MC sufficiently. The output from the (solid state) ML device was then fed to the input of an MM phono stage, because RIAA correction (and a little more gain) was needed. Thus, I was not being eccentric when I fed the ML output into my MM phono. (Actually, I never bought into MC at that time, and I never owned the ML pre-pre; I heard them in other systems.) The other notable "pre-preamplifier" that came along a little later in the USA was the Counterpoint SA-2. Also an active gain device, but one that used tubes and was therefore noisy but better sounding than the ML. Maybe the early Denon and Ortofon SUTs were available back then, but I don't recall that they had gained popularity as yet. There are still one or two pre-preamplifiers on the current market. Hagerman make one of them.
Once again, you are double-spaced. Very stylish.
