Upgrading phono stage

@still are you selling?

At or about 1k serious consideration should be given to a preowned EAR 834p.

See the point I was trying to make.  All kinds of suggestions with virtually no commentary on how any of these pieces sound.

Go with a 2-M Bronze or even Black. That should kick it up.

I recently was wondering the same thing about the phono stage in my Rogue Pharaoh. I hadn't spun any vinyl for a while when a close friends' stories about his new turntable got me interested again to find out how much sonic benefit there was to be had in going with an external phono stage and at what cost. 4 years ago when I got my used Rega RP6 I had a dealer upgrade the stock cartridge to a Hana EL and asked about a future upgrade of phono stages and they recommended the Musical Surroundings Phonomena II+ at $750. Fast forward 4 years and another dealer has popped up even closer to where I live and has a unit that I can take home to demo. I instantly heard more detail and nuances - an overall greater sense of "musicality", if you will, coming from the record grooves , than I had before. I should mention that the optional linear power supply ($600) is a big factor here - the phono stage alone gives you sonic benefits , but these are greatly enhanced with a LPS vs the supplied SMPS walwart. I would highly recommend a sBooster LPS  power supply at $400 over the MS unit though - the MS unit has a thin supply power cord to the phono stage that I discovered had an intermittent short in it, whereas the sBooster has a very thick supply cord . Overall the sBooster is bigger, heavier and just feels more robust. I have previous experience with sBooster as I added one to my DAC and it made a huge difference in sound quality over the stock walwart. As with all things audio, whenever possible try before you buy-  if that is not possible read as many reviews as you can and remember that YMMV. Good luck and good travels on your audio journey.