MC phono stage without transformer?

A newbie question:

I read a lot of 'reservation' about using an external MC step up transformer to increase the gain of an MM phono stage. But as I searched around for MC phono stages, I noticed that a lot of these actually have internal step-up transformers, some of these transformers are exactly the same as what some people used to make their external step-up.

So if transformer is no good, I should really be looking for an MC phono without the tranformer? Do these exist though?