Transformer stepup size

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.

Well that sums it up, thank goodness.

In support of, "NEVER USE A STEPUP TRANSFORMER", we shall also adopt, "NEVER LET CIRCUMSTANCES OVERRULE DOGMA."

I stand corrected, humbled even. You have my vote for the next papal vacancy, there could hardly be a stonger candidate.

Gents: there has been a deviation from topic here I notice.
Nevertheless, for info, let me tell you that I have owned many phono stages without stepup : Atmasphere MP-1, the Groove, Walker Reference and the Aethetix IO. I have also owned a few that use a SS stepup (Audible Illusions, Herron) and some that use a transformer stepup(Hovland and now the amazing K&K). So I have been around the block a few times. I currently favour the much more expensive but stunning Bent Mu stepup(with integrated short interconnects) over the Lundhal inside the K&K. So I was probing for actual comparative experiences with stepups to calibrate my own, rather than debate the usefulness of stepups. Debates of the comparative value of phono stage design with/without stepups for MC application have been covered elsewhere, I believe.
Perhaps I selected the wrong forum.