What's A Good Upgrade From A Manley Steelhead?

Ah….. even at the levels Bill frequents..for decades now, he realizes improvement is always possible…. No matter the $. Perhaps that could be your first lesson ?

My best to those who love music and the endless quest for better….

Thank you.

And your first lesson could be to lookup the word "upgrade" in the dictionary and figure out what it means. You are welcome.

This is why I frequent this forum less. Lack of knowledge, strong on opinion and nasty. GFY. 

You won't learn anything from me. 

what a loss...

Maybe if you hadn't been condescending and didn't assume things about me, we could have taught each other a few things, but oh well.

I did hear the Steelhead and a lot of phono preamps, side by side. Your argument that I had to own one to have a seat at the table made 0 sense to me. You don't have to own a rocket to have a PhD in the subject.

@rooze: Are you familiar with the gear tastes and/or reviews of the late Art Dudley? His hi-fi priorities were first full-bodied tonal color and saturation, followed closely by "forward rhythmic propulsion"---the timing characteristics of hi-fi gear, a subject little discussed in hi-fi reviews (Herb Reichert being one exception).

Art preferred the pre-amps and power amps of Shindo Laboratories above all others (though in his review of the EAR-Yoshindo 912 he stated it provided sound competitive with his Shindo). I don’t believe Shindo offers a separate phono stage, but you can do what some hard-core 1950’s-60’s audiophiles did---use only the phono stage of a full-function pre-amp (phono and line stages), sending the RIAA signal available at the tape out jacks of a Shindo (or any other full-function pre-amp for that matter) to your own line stage. Who knows,. you might like the Shindo line stage as well!