Borbely Audio phono stage

Dear Nick: You have a very serious analog rig and audio system that deserves something better that what you are looking for.

The phonopreamp, in my opinion, is an extreme important ( maybe the most important ) link in the audio system and in the analog quality music sound reproduction.
You already choose carefully your TT, tonearm and cartridge ( great ones ) for you can have the best out the LP's.
The critical signal that comes from your TT/T/C must be handled by a top performance phonopreamp where the inverse RIAA eq. has not any deviation, where the signal has to be amplified with out noise/colorations/distortions. So, you have to choose an audio device that can do that job with out step-up transformer that do a severe degradation ( this SUT means an additional cables, RCA connectors and an additional stage where the signal has to pass. Please don't do it, don't destroy the " true music " that comes from the cartridge. ) to that critical signal.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

You think it would be better to use the borbely without the S&B stepup? Many people seem to think highly of this latter unit - as they do of the S&B transformer volume control. What is your experience with transformer? Which phono stages do you like?

Dear Nick: I owned several SUT's/head-amps and heard many others from Denon to Audio Note, from Ortofon to Expressive Technologies, from Classe to Koetsu and Micro Seiki: no one improve the quality sound reproduction and every one degraded it. I use SUT's from 150.00 to 8K in price, it does not matters the price is the transformers ( any ) that is wrong for this application.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.