Mainstream Phono Stages Incorporating Premium Branded PCB Parts - Do They Exist?

There were a few Brands of Copper Cap's, which were used at a few different values in the same place on the schematic prior to my bringing in one other Brand, that came as a Brand recommended from a small group on a Forum who produce some very attractive Low Watt Tube Amp's.

The Copper Cap's were from Audyn, and as stated purchased at a operational value lesser than already used, and was a difficult part to get the EE to buy into.

It got the Stage, where the exchanges were my Amp' being designed, my choices matter as well. I am not a EE minded person, I rejected all opportunities to be taught EE Skills many years ago. The choice paid off, and took the Amp' from being Solid Footed to Fleet Footed.

The Z Foils brought the ethereal qualities where the Soundstage had a few more Pumps of air added and became more voluminous in all dimensions, with a much more believable Coherence Across the Frequencies, with the Attack - Micro Details and body of the notes and vocal becoming quite noticeable for presence and impression made.    

Larry, are you talking about DeJaVu Audio in northern Virginia? $400 capacitor? Indeed.

Yes, it was aa Audio Note capacitor used in lieu of a Western Electric paper in oil.  It’s hard to believe, but there are much more expensive capacitors sold by Audio Note.  Deja Vu uses what works for their sound, so the parts mix includes crazy expensive parts and very cheap parts, and even parts that are old and test bad but sound good (e.g., old vintage caps with high DC leakage which is not relevant in crossover usage).  
 

A customer with multiple Deja Vu custom-built systems was fuming mad because some very cheap look binding posts with ugly plastic covers over thin and tiny brass metal fittings were installed on a very premium amplifier.  The customer insisted on something “better.”  Vu was tempted to not allow the customer to buy the amp because he was unworthy of such an amp (Seinfeld Soup Nazi: “No soup for you”), but compromised when he found some nice looking and not too bad sounding binding posts (something like WBT pure silver binding posts).  I heard a great sounding system there that had a vintage field coil driver that now sells for more than $30,000 per pair matched with $100 tweeters; its all about the results. 

I used to frequent the store on rte 123. Vu is a nice guy. But his shtick (tube SE amps driving hyper-efficient electromagnetic speakers)and my shtick (OTLs with ESLs) are very different.

He used to have a Russian guy who built those custom SE amps.

Because the builds can be for a specific customer’s needs, there are some quite odd pieces out there, like a single chassis holding a phono stage and crossover.  This reminds me of an establishment in the M.A.S.H. novel: Finest Kind Pediatric Hospital and Whorehouse.

I have a custom built linestage by their Italian builder that has a transformer output that is intended to match with the transformer inputs on my amp which is a copy of a Western Electric 133 amp; my amp has original Western Electric input and output transformers.  Many of the other parts are vintage as well.  The big challenge with this sort of build is finding matching parts, particularly because the only way to know that a part is good is to try it in-circuit.