Best Phone Stage for under $1,000.000

Yep, Frank is da man. 

The OP asked a legit Q (without obvious typos), yet folks offer no substantive advice other than poke fun at his title. Some might consider posting something useful to the OP.

In fairness, the OP should specify what he means about “best” and the expected service needs for cartridges (MM, MC or MI?; output voltage needs?).

I make no claims as to it being the "best", but you can find used Musical Surroundings Nova Phonomena units for well below $1K.  It's a very neutral unit, very quiet, and has a ton of loading and gain settings.  I also like the Jolida JD9 in that price range. 

I've been considering one of the Parks Puffin units.  I've seen and heard it and the demo system it was in sounded fantastic.  I don't need another phono stage, but I love its compact size and versatility.  It might replace one of my JD9s or one of the Novas.

I'm obsessed with phono stages! I have so many! Most just sit around collecting dust but the one I come back to the most is the Wright WPP-100C. Not only does it look cool with it's copper chassis but to my ears it just sounds magical. They hardly ever show up on the used market. I will probably never sell mine. The Wright gets my vote!

I have some experiences for you. The tube box SE is killer sounding, you get a low noise floor and the bloom of tubes, it's great sounding and cheap in comparison to others. The musical surroundings nova is also very good sounding, it has lower level detail retrieval and a blacker background than the tube box SE, it's also a litter darker sounding (in the mids) with less bloom, the bass has great control and the treble is very clean. Rogue audio Aris you can buy used for around that price and it betters both of those, it's just amazing sounding, with a huge soundstage and great layering, and musical enough you can listen for hours and just get lost in the music.