New $500 "best" phono stage?

Monolithic makes a phono preamp and separate power supply for about $600 that has received two excellent reviews--one available (at length) on
Monolithic.com
howartcow@yahoo.com

As Caterham says, the new Dynavector is supposed to be excellent. A Linn dealer friend has it in his Linn/ATC system and says it's fantastic. Going to hear it myself in the next couple of weeks.

I think "the best phono stage under $500" is a used preamp with built-in phono section. If you go with one less than 10 years old, then you won't have to re-cap it. Items like the Counterpoint preamps and the MFA preamps and even maybe some of the Audible Illusions earlier models may be available in that price range. If you don't mind re-capping, then you can go back to some early ARC preamps like the SP-6, or the Precision Fidelity C-7, or even some SS preamps with phono stages. Just use the "Tape Out" and run it into a "Line In" on your existing preamp, and this will bypass the volume controls and other unwanted circuitry in it, prior to entering your main preamp.

Well Twl, maybe maybe not. I think I paid $450 used for my Camelot Lancelot, and it beat the internal phonostage in my C-J PV-8a for which I paid (and which I believe still goes for) about $600 used, when that was additionally being used as my system preamp (so the outboard unit was handicapped by the extra set of interconnects and still won). Of course, any question this broad the asks for "the best" is open to endless - and quite possibly pointless - debate.