What's A Good Upgrade From A Manley Steelhead?

@rooze: Congratulations on having such a good system that you feel a need for an upgrade from your Steelhead phono pre-amp. We should all be so fortunate!

At the risk of appearing condescending (I hate that), may I suggest that a "deeper dive" into the music you love might provide a more meaningful improvement to your musical life than a "mere" component upgrade (if such is even a possibility) would? But then I consider musical enjoyment and appreciation the goal of all hi-fi endeavors. If I seem out of line, I apologize in advance.

In the past six or seven years I have added a great number of recordings to my music library (the term I prefer to collection), which has greatly advanced my ambition to absorb as much music as I can before my inevitable (and presumably impending) demise. Does your Steelhead provide a better reproduction of the music contained in your LP’s than does my Herron? Sure, if reports are to be believed (I’ve never heard the Steelhead). But it can only reproduce the music contained in your LP library. It is my opinion that the price of one’s hi-fi system should be kept in proportion to the amount of $ one has invested in his or hers music library. Not everyone agrees with that philosophy.

@bdp24 No problem with your comment at all, I'm considering all options and one option is certainly to 'do nothing'. I don't have a large vinyl collection, in part because I offloaded my collection some years ago and took a hiatus, and I've been slow to re-assemble my collection since reinvesting in the medium.

Most of the 'new' music I hear comes from digital/streaming, and I use digital sources to cherry-pick new stuff that I acquire on vinyl. So yes, I could certainly use the funds to accelerate the process of building my vinyl collection, or I could use it to make what I already have sound a little better. Two options that I'm still considering.

Cheers

@rauliruegas OK, thanks for that link. I like what I've heard over the years from Simaudio/Moon - I had their W10 monoblocks some years ago and more recently their 280D DAC. But I'd never really considered them as a contender in the phonostage arena....I'll do some reading/research.

Rooze

@wrm57 are doppelgängers. We seem to make the same moves. I also went from a Steelhead to the H3000, it sounded better in my system. I was rolling tubes in the Steelhead and using the MM inputs at 47k. I also used a line stage which added more meat to the bones. Eva Manley was great to deal with, the thing is really well built but for some reason, I couldn’t get it to open up-- there was a slight electronic glaze to the sound that made it very hi-fi. The Allnic is somewhat polarizing in that some folks who want the last word in clarity and detail find it "burnished" sounding- I didn’t need more detail, but the spatial information and retrieval of ambient cues is what really sold me. I’ve only had to do minor stuff on the Allnic--replaced one funky tube socket and replaced all the audio circuit tubes after 5+ years. I roll the rectifier- have a bunch of really good ones, including a NIB/NOS metal bass Mullard, which is a grail tube. The rectifier I like best for the voicing of my system is a GEC u52 with a cup base. Those are not particularly easy to find these days either. The rectifier will make a huge difference in the sound.

What whart said, "...for some reason, I couldn’t get it to open up-- there was a slight electronic glaze to the sound that made it very hi-fi."  The haze goes away with better coupling capacitors and getting rid of the 47 ohm resistors in the signal path.  Manley uses this topology, because they have to build fool-proof units, never knowing just how many feet of cable or what impedance their product might be asked to drive.  For any knowledgeable audiophile, with an intelligently put together system, the 47 ohm resistors and the 30uF of capacitance at both the phono stage and linestage outputs is simply crazy overkill.

One reason to "upgrade" is if you want to convert to balanced mode for your phono reproduction, as would be the case if you went for the Sim Audio phono stage recommended by Raul. In the one of my two systems where I use the Steelhead, it is driving Beveridge amplifiers which are single-ended all the way.  So there would be not much to gain by using a balanced preamplifier.  (I did think about installing transformers at the inputs of the Bev amplifiers, so they can be driven balanced.) In my other system, it is balanced all the way.