Transformer stepup size

Oh yes I forgot these exellent phono preamps: Spectral, Klyne, Halcro, Pass, MBL. Somebody talk to me about Edge buy I never have the opportunity to listen it.
Raul.

Hi Raul,
Thanks for the many recommendations. I'll add them to my list in case I decide to upgrade phono stage and/or preamp someday.

The phono stage was a Sonic Frontiers, an SF-1 I think though I never saw or heard it. It had both an MC and an MM phono stage. It was boosting a Shelter 501MkII (.4mv) into a c-j PV-10 preamp. The owner tried the following configurations:

A. 501 >> SF-1 MC input >> PV-10 line input
B. 501 >> BentAudio Mu >> SF-1 MM input >> PV-10 line input
C. 501 >> BentAudio Mu >> PV-10 MM input

He reported that A was the worst, B was much better, C was best. We can ignore C for this discussion since it merely compares the two different MM phono stages. The comparison of interest was A vs. B, where B was reportedly much better.

The SF-1 had three adjustable gain settings: 44, 54 and 62db. I presume (hope) the 62db setting was being used for configuration A and the 44db setting for configuration B. That would put A and B just 2db apart when my 1:10 SUT's were plugged in. Any thoughts?

This Sonic Frontiers phono stage it's a unit that appear in the years 92/93 in two models: your friend one an a signature model, I thing that the price was around 1,000.00 and 1,800.00 for the signature. Your friend model is a hybrid one and is a moderate gain ( not high-gain ) and a little noisy product. For today standards it is at the bottom end of a mid-fi product.
Regards.
Raul.

No disagreement on the SF from the little I've read, but that's irrelevant. If an SF is what my budget allows, why tell me that a more expensive unit is better? If I asked you for tonearm recommendations under $1K I hope you wouldn't insist that I demo a Schroeder Reference.

For this listener, going into the phono stage he already owned, he got better results from a SUT than from the high gain circuit, at virtually equal gain levels. That flat out disproves any absolutist position that a high gain stage is "always" superior to a SUT.

With unlimited resources and freedom to choose from among all available components I agree with you, the simplest path is likely to be best. But that isn't the real world for most people.

Dear Doug: I re-read your posts in this Divo thread and your last post don't makes any sense to me other that: " looking for a fight " or " I'm right you are wrong ".
Those attitudes are loosing time for both of us and for other readers.
No, tks.
Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.