Solid state or Tubes preamp phono stage.

Agree with you as well tablejockey and it was never my intent to go there.

@bigmac1963 Here's something to try:

Put both preamps side by side. Do not use any loading on the cartridge other than the stock 47KOhms.

Use the same LP and listen to both. Does one of them seem to play more surface noise than the other or sound brighter? Don't get that one.

The surface noise is high frequency overload that manifests as ticks and pops. The brightness is distortion caused by high frequency overload.

FWIW its far easier to design a tube phono section that does not have this problem. With semiconductors the circuit you want to avoid overloading (the input) might be outside of the feedback loop.

I would like to thank blisshifi for your opinion and the information you gave me on choosing a amplifier. I decided to purchase the musical fidelity m6x vinyl I think it will be a good match with my turntable and cartridge thanks bigmac1963.

I would like to thank blisshifi for your opinion and the information you gave me on choosing a amplifier. I decided to purchase the musical fidelity m6x vinyl I think it will be a good match with my turntable and cartridge thanks bigmac1963.

@blisshifi 

Again, I have the Trumpet, and that Fremer review was terrible. It’s almost as if he rushed through it and didn’t seem to understand how to set it up, nor really cared to understand it fully. Which should be unusual for someone with his experience. I didn’t have the ‘issues’ he seemed to have even when mine was purely stock. Reading that review when it came out, he seemed to have had his selection options all wrong.

I really didn’t get it, and was actually surprised when Jim linked the review to his site.