Pure tube phono preamp

Full disclosure: I'm the importer of the NVO tubed phono stages.
For clarification:  

The NVO’s use solid state rectification.

The SPA II (22 tubes total) has two high voltage and four heater bridge rectifiers, the SPA-One (13 tubes total) has one high voltage and two heater bridge rectifiers.

There are more than 40 units in the States and they do come up on the used market from time to time, maybe once or twice a year. Current orders are taking several months to come in due to the pandemic.

A Happy & Healthy New Year to all and please be SAFE!.

Steve

SOS

OP,

Not to be against your original idea which I have no recommendation for, just to clarify:

You seem to be both tempted by and concerned about separate SUT. I was too. I avoided MC for many years, because of noise of early pre-pre transformers. That problem's gone.

SUT's have no power, they simply have internal transformers, some with optional resistances. Well built ones have no hum. I put mine next to this and that, just to see, I cannot get any hum out of it.

OP, that's not what you really want; what you want is a SUT feeding into a tube phono amp, that will give you the silence you want plus the musical tube amplification you desire.

I had Zesto Andros PS1 for a couple of years connected Brinkman Bardo with miyajima kansui cartridge, the sound was love on first sound, dynamic, quiet on the background and you can hear all detailes.

a couple of months ago I change the Zesto with Brinkman Edison MKII and the Bardo with Balance, I got improved in all aspects but I can tell you that my previous combinations although not the same level wasn't a slouch either and gave me wonderful results that most of the people would be more than satisfied to have on their systems.

If you are talking about a phono preamp for genuinely low LOMCs, it is not really possible to get the high gain/low noise needed with just tubes.  Hence the need to use opamps, FETs, SUTs, etc., to do so.  Even the ARC Reference Phono 10 uses FETs in addition to tubes.

Of all the options available to get the high gain/low noise needed for LOMCs, many prefer using an SUT because it is a passive device (no active circuitry or power needed).  If the SUT is properly designed and mates well with your cart, they can not only be no/low noise, but also provide more dynamics, liveliness, and texture.  YMMV.