interconnect suggests under 300 used.

I like Bwhite's suggestions. Let's run with that suggestion. You might want to borrow a super cable (eg Vahalla, Transparent Reference) between the premap and amp, and then find other cables that work well upstream of it that you can afford presently. Then you have a goal to work towards. NB: A dealer friend just lent me a Transparent Balanced and after 7 days of burn-in I can see what people are talking about....

Great suggestions: There is one local dealer with some of these cables Galen Carol. I will try and borrow a set of expensive cables and a few of the suggested cables made here. Is it fair to try this test only using a MD 102 tuner, since my ml390s is on order? I will let you all know once I borrow some cables. Thank you all.

Dear Electrostaticman-
Congrats on eliciting a great thread.
You have a reference quality tuner but unless the station, the antenna, and the broadcast material is of like quality I believe you should wait until the ml390s is broken-in before making any $$$ decisions. For example, I found a certain silver cable so-so on my Accuphase tuner until I made changes between the amp and preamp. Now that cable is super - I don't name it because it is not balanced and I assume you can run a balanced cable from your 102 to you preamp. YMMV. Again, the point is to have more fun doing it in stages. Relax, enjoy!

Yes ivanj the your right i will be using a balanced connection between the fm to preamp. I should receive the 390s on tuesday. I will leave feed-back on first impressions. I wonder how long it will take for the ml to burn in, does anyone know?

Forget buying a new pair of cables and go buy a better used pair and really hear the difference. My 2 cents worth. Galen Carol is also a great guy.