MM Phono Stages With Greater Than 40 dB of Gain?

You can email Darlington Labs and order an MP-7 with higher gain.

It's listed as +40db but I believe I've heard of customers ordering 42-44db.

My EAR 834 clone is pretty close to my Modwright which is supposed to be 56db.

https://libertyaudio.com/service/b2b-1-all-fet-phono-preamplifier/

Can be made with what ever gain you wish

Good Listening

Peter

My Sutherland KC Vibe has 40, 45, 50,  55,  60 dB settings.  Some of their other offerings have even higher gain on the top of the setting 

If you have the bucks, do not ignore Raul’s mention of the new 3180. I own the 3160, and it is superb (and all solid state, in a tube guy’s system).

As to the Manley phono stages, the gain stage is a hybrid cascode (transistor on the bottom/tube on top), not purely tube devices, if you want solid state.

Mulveling’s suggestion of using a 1:10 SUT into an MC stage, in order to derive enough gain for the MC2000, is interesting. I don’t know of anyone who has ever tried that. The MC2000 has an internal R of 2 ohms and so could theoretically drive a 20 ohm load in voltage mode. To achieve that minimum acceptable load on the cartridge, you would have to use an MC stage with at least a 2000 ohm input resistor. (square of the turns ratio of a 1:10 SUT is 100. 2000 ohms/100 = 20 ohms.)

40dB of gain was the standard back in the pre-moving coil days, and very few phono stages DON'T provide that amount of gain for moving magnet and moving iron pickups.

The Herron VTPH phono amps (both the VTPH-1mm and VTPH-2) provide 42 or 44dB of gain (depending on the use of 12AX7 vs. 12AT7 tubes), but are no longer in production. They come up for sale occasionally, and are real nice phono stages, priced below the sound quality they produce.