SS phono stage in $2k to $3k range...

My personal favorites are the Pass XOno and Vacuumstate JLTI. I compared the JLTI a while ago to the Sutherland and the Graham Slee Era Gold. I preferred the JLTI to both: the Sutherland was too polite slightly lacking the dynamics of the JLTI, the Graham Gold was not that refined IMO. Overall both stages did not come close to the resolution of the JLTI.

Between Pass and JLTI is comes down to your cartridge - I preferred the tightly controlled bass and extra dynamics and control of the Pass with my Allaerts. With a Lyra Argo (i) I slightly preferred the JLTI.

I did hear good things of the Heed audio too, but have never compared it.

I'm very happy with my Simaudio LP5.3 with the outboard power supply ($2750 total). The sound is excellent, and there's a good range of options for gain, loading, etc. They also have a 10-year warranty, so they figure to be reliable.

You folks have given me some interesting alternatives to check out.

I have bought stuff fom Jay before and he has recommended the JLTi or Whest to me. I do trust his opinions and he's a really nice guy, too! I came up with the Pass Xono idea on my own. It's interesting that the JLTi and Xono apparently sound similar. They sure are physically different! LOL... The Pass is two large boxes and the JLTi (w/power supply) is two tiny ones. I am fortunate that I do have much vacant rack space, so size doesn't really matter to me. The JLTi is kind of 'cute', though! How's the build quality on the JLTi? Are the RCA jacks of high quality? I'm not concerned about the Pass Labs build quality. The Whest is totally an unknown to me, and there isn' much info about the PS.30R on the web, likely because it's newly released, I think.

I have the Sutherland PhD and am very happy with it. The instruments float in the air and the sound is a bit creamy.

I actually compared the JLTi to the Era Gold at Jay's(Audio Revelation) house on his truly great system(s). In his system, the only difference we both could discern(although, he may have been polite and not mentioned more) between the two was a very, very, slight hard edge to transients with trumpets and sax on the Era's side. But, my unit had not been powered up in quite a while and had no warmup at Jay's. Graham Slee recommends a minimum 72 hours, and suggests his units be left on 24/7. When I got home a gave the Era/EXP the recommend warmup, I could no longer discern the "blattiness".

Cannot praise Jay highly enough, he is one of the "good guys" in this industry and his musical and equipment taste/opinion is very, very, good.