BAT Equipment vs Audio Research

Skip the BAT phono cards, they're little transistor circuit boards--and sound like it. Yes it's only $500 more to get the phono, but IMO that money plus a tiny bit more coin would be much better spent on a nice reasonably priced external phono stage like the EAR 834 or Lehmann Black Cube as two examples. Usually, one or the other of these will float your boat, and for the $$, they're hard to beat. If you're prepared to pay more for phono, then that changes things of course, but for under $750, I think you'd be hard-pressed to beat EAR or the Cube.

Whoops, saw that you already have the ARC external phono stage. I don't think it would be a stretch to claim that what you already have will be significantly better than the BAT phono card, no matter which BAT preamp you buy. And BTW, as a former VK-30 owner, don't necessarily assume the VK-30SE is better. To my ears, I preferred the sound of the 30 with premium (high-$$) NOS 6922s to the sound of the 30SE. YMMV