$3000 Upgrade Dilemma: My Next Purchase


My analog front end is older, but good: Alphason Sonata turntable with Alphason HR-100MCS titanium arm (with Van den Hull silver wiring) and a beautiful sounding Madrigal Carnegie One low output MC (0.28mv) cartridge. It's connected to a Tandberg 3008A preamp w/phono stage and an Electron Kinetics Eagle 2A amp (remember John Iverson?) and finally, Thiel CS2s. Also, for when my wife is sleeping... a Ray Samuels Raptor tube headphone amp and AKG 702s.

Here's my dilemma: I want to take a quantum leap in sound quality, especially in the areas of overall musicality, inner detail, soundstaging and air around the instruments. And, I recently fell in love with the tube/vinyl combo after 30 years of stubborn solid statehood. And, the Tandberg's attenuator is crackling and popping like breakfast cereal again, and I'm tired of wasting money trying to get it fixed. So...

With $3000 to play with in Audiogonland... do I:

1. Buy a superb, quiet outboard tube phono preamp and use the Tandberg as Line Stage until I can replace it?

2. Buy a tube Preamp with a superb built-in phono stage (does one exist?) to replace the Tandberg?

Any suggestions will be very appreciated, especially about specific gear. Keep in mind that the phono stage will need at least 65 dB of gain to drive my cartridge.

Also, does anyone know of a phono stage with two sets of single-ended outputs? I'd love to be able to use one of them to go directly into the headphone amp, bypassing the line stage completely!

Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom and experience.
Ag insider logo xs@2xalonski
Thanks everyone,

I'm most interested in SwampWalker's suggestion of the VAC Standard LE. I read up on it and it seems perfect! Now to find one...
Oops - sorry, but the Janus' lines out follow the line section. The Aesthetix Rhea phono stage (similar $) has multiple lines out as well - but no line section, at all.

Marty
The Aesthetix Janus has a high quality, high gain phono stage, excellent line stage, and 2 line outs per channel (both sets allow your choice of RCA or XLR). Used examples periodically turn up on this site at $3,000 to $3500.

Marty
Supratek preamp is pretty awesome.
Dodd Audio might be an interesting addition as well.
No phonostage tho. Runs on batteries and it might give you what you're looking for. Garry also makes battery phonostage.
I doubt that it has enough gain to work with your cart but adding a quality step up is not a problem - according to Garry Dodd.

Mariusz
I suggest option 2. The Tandberg is probably getting near the end of its useful life and, IMO, a good preamp/phono stage is the "heart" of any good system. For $3k there are some very good full function pre-amps available; look at VAC, Modwright, CAT, BAT, or Atma-sphere. The Atma MP-3 used should be available at or below your budget. The VAC Standard LE would certainly be under that $.
Thanks Weiserb and Jaybo,

I'm ready for a change to tubes, so I'm not attached to the Tandberg. Any BAT w/phono you can recommend with a single-ended connection option?

I'm a little surprised by the speaker upgrade recommendation. If I love my Thiels and they basically do what they're told, wouldn't upgrading my front end and then my amp reveal the most musicality in my system?
If you like vintage Tandberg the 3018 is a big step up and the upgrade price is about $500.00 next step is a preamp from CJ, BAT or ARC with built in Phono and some have remote

Then get a pair of Aerial 9's for 4-4500 and hopefully you can get some money from the thiels.

One catch the Aerials need 200 watts min to sound awesome