Wow.....ask, and ye shall receive. ;-) Thanks again, one and all.
@oddiofyl: Roger Modjeski talked about the virtues of the 6922/6DJ8 for audio use----specifically in regards to phono pickup applications, and it’s advantages over the 12AX7 (see the clio09 post above). And Tim de Paravicini, another "pretty fair" hi-fi designer (EAR-Yoshino, Luxman, Quad, Musical Fidelity) used the higher voltage 7DJ8 in his pre-amps (I own an EAR 868L).
The quietest phono/line pre-amp I’ve owned was a Dynaco PAS 2 as "modified" (redesigned, actually) by Frank Van Alstine, who used 5751’s in place of the stock 12AX7’s (cranked to full output there was only a hint of tube rush, no hum what-so-ever). So it will be interesting to see how the RM-5 compares in terms of noise. Low noise was a high priority for Modjeski. My pickups are very high output (5mV’s!), so don’t require much gain---another way to achieve low noise. The gain of the phono stage of the RM-5 is only 36dB, plenty for a 5mV signal.