Phono preamp worth it with MM cartridges?

Chak, I hope you understand that I am agreeing with you about 30K ohms.  Got that?  I personally have found most often that 100K ohms sounds best with many of my MMs.  This started with the Grado TLZ or XTZ which I know we both like. The TLZ sounded best with 100K ohms load.  I have actually never tried less than 47K ohms.  Also, in many cases it's a trade-off with capacitance.  If you increase R above 47K there would be a corresponding change in the best capacitative load.  If you don't want to mess around with C, you can just play with R (more or less) until you get the best result with whatever is the total C load seen by the phono stage.  You don't even have to know exactly the value of C, just change R until you are happy.

No Love for the MoFi Carts?

Seems like the 500 dollar cart range is just as packed as the 500 dollar TT market.

Chakster sold me a very nice AT ML150-OCC MM cartridge that I would be willing to let go if you are interested?  Send me a PM. He highly recommended this cartridge and it is a good one especially at the less than $500 price point. It betters most MM sold today. 

i agree as mm's go the at ml150 is excellent

need a loading kit to make the treble sound right though... it did not like 47k iirc

jjss49 you bring up a good point. I did try a few different settings. What did you decide on worked best in your setup?