Anyone compared Whest Audio with Manley Steelhead?

FWIW, I greatly prefer the K&K phonostage to the Whest and the Manley, of course, trumps the K&K (as you might expect given the price difference). But, whether there is enough sonic difference to justify the cost difference is a personal call.

I sell both and them them both very much. That being said, the Manley Steelhead is in a different leagur than the Whest. The Whest at the 2600 price point is terrific, but it is not a fair comparison with the Steelhead.

I had the Whest.20 with Nottingham Spacedeck/Ace arm and ZYX Airy3 SB in my home and played it next to my ARC PH3 SE with VPI Aries 2/JMW 10 and ZYX Fuji S combo. It was very good indeed, but not enough to make me sell my SE. Each had its strengths...they both had huge soundstages and excellent dynamics. The Whest excelled slightly at bass tightness and coherency. The ARC had deeper bass(with tubes! with more bloom and depth. One cavaet is that the Whest was still breaking in with about 50 hrs on it..so it would still be getting better.

I suppose the point is that I agree that if it was that close to my PH3 SE..then would it be fair comparison to the Manley? I would think the Manley would be killer and perhaps as Jtinn suggests..in a different league.