Phono preamp or SUT for low output moving coil

Dear @Viridian: Neither the Van den Hul Grasshopper II.

@dcaudio  , do it a favor and stay away of transimpedance/current phono stage designs instead your choice most be for voltage phono stage designs. SUT always is an inferior choice against an active high gain pgono stage design.

You can look for the PS Audio Stellar that outperforms any MM/SUT combination (tube or SS ) .

PS Audio Stellar Phono phono preamplifier Page 2 | Stereophile.com

and Fremer compared against the CH P1/X1, Ypsilon and others ( with prices over 20-30 times the humble PS Audio price tag. ) using top SAT tonearm and Caliburn TT and cartridges of the caliber of Lyra Atlas SL.

Obviously is interesting to read the M.Fremer review including the real time measurements page.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

@viridian Thank you for the information.  Good to know. 

It's very difficult to set a firm upper limit for the internal impedance of an LOMC cartridge that you want to work "well" with a current driven phono stage. This is because each brand of current driven phono stage will present a different input impedance, which is always going to be above zero ohms, the ideal value for current drive. But you cannot have a true zero ohm input impedance, because that is a short circuit to ground. So each matchup between cartridge and current drive phono stage is different in terms of loading the stage. A decent rule of thumb is to use cartridges with internal impedance less than ~12 ohms, and then it's trial and error. (I don't use the term "transimpedance" because that implies that all matches do work fine, and that is not my experience, nor does it conform to the facts as I perceive them.)

well, if you like your onboard phono section, get an SUT or two or three.

if not, how much you wanna spend on phono amplification altogether?