I have tried an external stepup into the Io at its highest and second-highest attenuation. The results were not good - no synergy whatsoever. The Io is meant to be used as a fully active phonostage. If you want to use stepups, I'd look elsewhere.
I'm not sure I want to do this either. I had no intention of trying it until I read some very positive reviews of a few SUTs and talked to a few people who use them even though they too have sufficient gain in their phonostages.
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