Having made a couple of suggestions that were well over the stated budget I’m now going to go to the opposite extreme in recommending a preamp. The
Antique Sound Lab Line Two DT ($450) is a very simple one-tube line stage (meaning of course that it would have to be used in conjunction with an external phono stage for purposes of playing LPs). A few years ago I used its very similar predecessor, the Line One, in my main system for a time when my much more expensive preamp developed a problem, and I found it to be remarkably transparent. Also, the one tube it uses (a 12AU7) is fairly inexpensive, and if you chose to do so you would have the ability to fine tune the sound by substituting currently produced or vintage equivalents. I was happy with the Line One even with its stock tube, though.
Its relatively high output impedance and relatively high gain would be suitable matches for your Stasis 2 amplifier, and for many other amplifiers, but if you were to eventually replace the Stasis 2 you would want to avoid models having low input impedance (e.g., 30K ohms or less) and relatively high gain (e.g., significantly more than 30 db).
I’ll leave it to others to suggest a phono stage, hopefully costing in the vicinity of $500. Given your budget, the phono cartridge you choose would most likely be a moving magnet or other high output type, so the phono stage needn’t provide the capability of supporting low output moving coil cartridges.
Best regards,
-- Al
