I always though it was more critical to keep capacitance low AFTER the SUT, rather than BEFORE the SUT, becasue of the after-SUT’s capacitative load supposedly "reflecting back times the sqaure of the turns ratio" (i.e. the opposite of what happens to load resistance)?
@mulveling Its critical to keep the capacitance down on either side of the transformer. Ultimately you'll want to load the transformer correctly for the cartridge you have and the input impedance of the phono section (typically 47KOhms). Some SUTs are designed for a specific cartridge and assume a 47KOhm load so these are less worries. Something like a Jensen which is designed to work with a wide variety of cartridges will need very specific loading to work right. The interconnects are part of that loading and very simply have to be low capacitance.