built-in phono stages -- good idea?

The main problem with this is you are talking about the most difficult to design component in all of high end audio. The phono stage has to take the weakest signal in all of audio, amplify it by the most gain in all of audio, and equalize it with the wildest and yet most precise EQ in all of audio. Any one of these is a monster challenge in and of itself. The phono stage has to handle all three!

The more you look into what goes into a good phono stage- and turntable- the more you start to appreciate why they aren't very often combined into one. Noise rejection and quality power supplies are critical. Turntables have a motor, which you notice they always put as far away from the cartridge and arm as possible. Because of the noise. So now you would add an additional power supply and phono circuit in there, and have to shield all that from the motor as well.

Power and shielding are way easier (read, can be done more cost-effectively) inside a pre-amp or integrated amp. 

The main market for tables with built-in phono stages is entry level, because there you have people looking for plug and play, and this makes it simple. 

Emt tables are built in. I think Walker Audio tables  almost do this  by connecting the arm wire directly to the phono amp. It’s just not convenient enough to be viable option. Even the best design isn’t necessarily easy to market.  

The power supply would be external of course. Only low voltage in the turntable + shield box on the actual compact phono stage.

I don't know... it seems like a good idea to have the amplification as close as possible to the delicate signal source, to reduce the amount of noise being picked up. It is now possible to have compact, high performance phono pre amps thanks to SMD.and good opamps. Just seems logical so I must be missing something ???

The Naim Prefix is one example of a commercial product that is based on those principles.

There is nothing stopping one for placing the phono amp right behind or below the table/arm/cartridge, with an uninterrupted run of internal arm wire from cartridge tags to RCA plugs going right into the phono amp jacks. That's how I and others do it. If you can get the phono amp close enough to the arm, the wire need be only 1/2 meter long.

An interesting idea, but difficult in execution. Ortofon went part of the way there on their early SPU cartridges building a transformer into the headshell. See the excerpt below from the Ortofon wedsite:

"Because of the very low impedance and the very low output, the first SPU cartridge, the SPU-GT, had a small transformer integrated with the cartridge units in the GM- housing, yielding about 7mVolt at 5cm/sec suitable for an MM input sockets with 50kOhm loading. "

Can't remember any single problem with separate phono stages i've been using for a long time for MM, MI or MC cartridges.  

What if you built-in phono stage is not good ? 

This would bring the following benefits to its performance:
Elimination of the sensitive and susceptible phono cable
Reduction of the need for a balanced phono stage
Reduction of noise without the need for balanced design -- half of the battle is won already.

Getting rid of the tonearm cable is good. But the location otherwise says nothing about operating balanced- if anything, you'll need it even more as the preamp is susceptible to noise from the phono motor, especially if single-ended. Plus you'd need to transmit the signal to the preamp, so it would be beneficial to have a balanced output too (I say too because a cartridge is a balanced source).

Wouldn't the shield box easily shield from the motor?

Wouldn't the shield box easily shield from the motor?

It depends on the material. I've found over the years that ferro-magnetic materials in the chassis can affect the sound of the product. Especially when using a single-ended circuit though, placing it near a hum field like a motor seems unwise.

B&O made a couple table with a built in phono section. I owned one and it wasn't noisy, sounded pretty good all things considered.