Icarus12-
I think for your use, the Emotiva PT-100 is a perfect choice, and at $329, leaves money in your pocket. It checks all of your boxes (phono stage, tone controls, price) plus a few others that I think will benefit you down the road (tuner, onboard dac, remote). I don’t think you are going to hear any worthwhile sound quality increases by spending more on a pre-amp.
My thinking follows from the fact that your Snell’s are a very musical and bit warm speakers that are not as sensitive to the front end as other speakers may be. This is not a bad thing and I tend to lean towards speakers that have that voicing (and have a soft spot for older Snells). They make most music sound great, including less than optimal recordings, which frankly is most.
Instead of spending more on a pre-amp that won’t give you any real benefit, I suggest you consider the following, both short term and long term:
1) A surge suppressor and power conditioner- It sounds like you live in an area where lightning or other power surges can damage your equipment. For less than $100 you can get a high quality surge protector with some power conditioning from Furman.
2) The Nakamichi you purchased is a really great amp. That said, it will at some point need to the power supply caps. I will quote Nelson Pass (the designer/engineer of your amplifier) directly here as he responded in a thread about PA-5 upgrades on DIY Audio:
"If it’s older than 15 years replace the power supply caps with ones
comparable to the originals. Panasonic or Nichicon is plenty good enough.
Arrange to get the amplifier some serious ventilation and then raise the
bias until the heat sinks run at 50 deg C after an hour of operation.
Serious ventilation is what you think it is - a fan is not out of the question."
I would expect it would cost from $150 up to have a qualified technician do just the power supply caps. There are also people who do entire upgrades.
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pass-labs/218270-nakamichi-pa-5-upgrades.html 3) Please spend $10 or so and get a toslink or digital RCA cable to hook up your CD to the Emotiva, which undoubtedly has a nicer DAC (assuming your CD player has a digital out).
4) Consider getting a music streamer and streaming service with the money you saved. Never in a million years would I have thought I would recommend something from this company, but the Bose Soundtouch Wireless Link Adaptor a great entry point at $150. It has a digital out, is fully controllable from a smart phone, easy to configure and use, and compatible with spotify, deezer, amazon music, and itunes among others. I would suggest the Yamaha MusicCast WXAD-10 for $160, but it seems impossible to get. Others may be able to suggest alternative streamers.
I delayed using streaming services for a long time, until I finally dove in last year with Deezer. I have to tell you, it has been the best audio decision I have made. I have found more new music I like in the past year than the prior 20. For $20 a month (Deezer is CD quality at that price, Amazon has a good amount of music in its free service for prime members, abet at a slightly lower quality, and slightly lower quality 256-320kbps mp3 streams, are $10 a month from most services) you get access to over 45 million different tracks.
So in sum, here is how I would spend your budget:
$329- Emotiva PT-100
$91- Furman M-8x2
$150 Bose Soundtouch Streamer
$10 Toslink of coax digital cable for CD to preamp (amazon or monoprice).
$580 and you get not only a great preamp, but an entirely new world of music, which is why are here in the first place. I hope this helps.
