What is the Phono stage you have finished with?

I have dealt with Whest Audio personally, and I can say that they not only make fine phono stage products, but they are a fine company to deal with. Their customer service is very good. I have a Whest PS30RDT and I would describe it as having a "sweet" sound. Admittedly, this is a very inarticulate description but it produces a somewhat unconstrained sound and a nice 3-dimensional soundstage.

Let me say that you have to be very careful when comparing phono stages because you rarely get an apples-to-apples comparison. There are differences in gain (even for what are supposed to be comparable settings) and differences in load resistor values - each of these can affect the sound of the unit in your system.

Another vote for Whest Audio. James Henriott, the gifted designer and proprietor of this UK company is probably the friendliest, most polite person you will ever meet or deal with in the somewhat idiosynchratic world of high end audio personalities. Thre weeks ago I visited James at his office/manufacturing facility in Brentford, near London (about 30 miles from my house) and 'upgraded' my PS.30 RDT for the new 'Special Edition' model fitted with Clarity Caps, the new fully discrete bipolar transistor input stage, updated RIAA filter capacitors and reworked power supply. The sound from vinyl is absolutely superb, seeming to offer the best from solid state and tube designed phono stages. Oh, and the casework is now all black!

A nagra PLP which is a very good preamp as well , i have not tried many at home, i have owned ARC sp 6 with build in phono which had not enough gain also a jasmine LP 2.0 with seperate power supply which is cheap and good , i am now 42 years old , i will probaly have an all Zanden system in a few years time and call it a day , as that is the best i have heard so far i have not heard it in my own system though its just a gut feeling,and a more esoteric player .

The casework for the Whest PS.30RDT SE is in black but the standard casework for the PS.30RDT is silver. You can get Whest to provide a PS.30RDT in black for an extra charge (which is what I did). The cheesy photos of the PS.30RDT SE on the Whest Audio website do not do justice to the appearance of the black casework actually looks much better than it appears in the Whest photos. In general, I think that Whest would serve themselves if they put some effort into improving the appearance of their website.

after having owned these : blue circle 22-707, whest 2.0, einstein the tt choice, burmester 011, cary ph 302, karan ka lp, cat legend, artemis pl-1, fm acoustics 222 mk3, ear 324.