Soundsmith - Thank you to everyone.

Peter, this has become a wide ranging question and answer process so I hope you will field another;
You build and sell some very expensive and complicated cartridge designs and yet your phono stage designs are relatively simple and inexpensive. Can you explain why? My guess would be that at the end of the day, you don’t have the resources to compete with the manufacturers of top-tier phono stages but maybe your answer is totally different.
Also, and I must confess to being a bit apprehensive about even bringing this up, but your remark;

Maybe some people have not looked hard at my last name. Ledermann. My parents were holocaust survivors.

confuses me. I am Jewish. I am 60. There is nothing in your name that would cause me for a second to suspect your parents were holocaust survivors. You have a German-sounding last name and your first name, I don’t need to tell you, is not one common to us Jews :-) Care to elaborate how or why your parents were gathered up to the camps and how you ended up with the name of Peter?
Also, a perhaps-amusing aside about Mr. Van den Hul. I met him at Axpona of 2019. I bought one of his Crimson Strads from one of his distributors and he signed my box and he happily posed for photos with me looking proud and happy to have one of his better cartridges. I was hanging around in the room he helped sponsor and sitting next to him and he looked at me at some point and asked "so what kind of name is Tallan?". I told him it was Russian (true) but I couldn’t help wondering what prompted his question.

The ox

I love you, pious ox; and mild a feeling
Of vigor and peace to the heart infuse me,
Or that solemn as a monument
You look at the free and fruitful fields,

0 that at the yoke bowing happily
The agil opra de l’uom grave seconds:
He urges you and pricks you, and you with the slow
Giro de ’patient eyes answer.

From the broad wet and black nostril
Smoke your spirit, and like a happy hymn
The bellowing in the serene air is lost;

And of the serious glaucous eye within the austere
Sweetness is reflected broad and quiet
The divine of the green silence plan.

@best-groove yes :-)

You have a German-sounding last name and your first name, I don’t need to tell you, is not one common to us Jews

I have eight 'Peters' just amongst my close Jewish circle of friends.
And I think the 'Jewish' Apostle St Peter knew his name was more popular in the ancient lands of Canaan than that of St Paul (Saul) or even Joshua (Yeshua)...Jesus himself 🤪

I was hanging around in the room he helped sponsor and sitting next to him and he looked at me at some point and asked "so what kind of name is Tallan?". I told him it was Russian (true) but I couldn’t help wondering what prompted his question.

I am Russian, never ever hear this name "Tallan" and never met anyone with this name in Russia.