Rowland Concerto phono vs Cadence

Geoch - Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I will take your suggestions to heart and try to audition the Einstein. A friend of mine speaks very highly of it. Glad I didn't go for the Cadence. As for "The Grail", I'll have to check into that, but bet it's out of my price range. I appreciate your help.

In my opinion the Jeff Rowland Cadence is much much better than Geoch described it. For me one of the very best transistor phono preamps at all. Do more of you had similar negative experiences??

Rowland Cadence is fantastic. Hard to find on Audiogon. Super quiet. Quite flexible with four loading choices. Built like a tank. Only caveat is it has balanced ins and outs and only one set of inputs.

Very musical and solid. I've heard both the Cadence (I own one) and the Concerto phono stage in the same system. Cadence easily bests it in all categories.

The Cadence may not be for everyone (like the poster above) but ignore anyone that says it is 'lowest in its class.' It just ain't so and they may have ulterior motives.

The Cadence needs a proper matching to the connected Line State (output) and more important, a specially terminated Tonearm cable (Pin are different). When this is not done, or it is used with XLR Adaptors which aren't internally bridged, it is far, far away from its abilities. But when all is done right, it is an amazing unit (and I can't say that about Boulder 2008, Kondo M7, Vitus, Ypsilon, Allnic 3000), it is able to give the Listener the time jump into the Golden Era of Analog. The tones are pure, right, the soundstage is without any limit and the dynamics must be heard to believe. A Ikeda 9 or Olympos SL is really, really difficult to amplify but when the Frontend gain is ok, a sonic tour de force starts...
Listening to Living Stereo LSC-2500 with Reiner is like sitting in front of the Orchestra, you can hear the Echoes from the massed Instruments when they reach the Walls from the Hall and are reflected, the Violins are so clear you can see in a way how many musicians there are, indeed, it is serving the imagination of being there ...
Or Decca SXL 2308 / Nutcracker Suite / Karajan / VPO
Well, normally nothing to write home about, BUT there is a hot cut available (Harold Fisher) which shows an up close picture of the orchestra with air around the instruments and superb imaging and depth. And also interesting, normally Decca used Neumann KM-56 Microphones, but here it is M-50. The M-50 was able to catch much more "Room information" and "Air" than the KM-56. To make a long story short, the Cadence is able to show the Listener that "there is something totally different going on there".
Most Phonostages level some Frequencies / Detail / Space / tonal structures, they make tonal structures equal (more or less). The Brain can compensate it when the Listener has the technical papers from the recording, but there is still a difference between that and REAL sounding served information.... anyway, there is worse out there :-)