koetsu

Great advice friends, i really appreciate it all.
Am using Pass' xp-15, so no worries of gain/noise i think, although i made a gift to a friend of one of Bob's Devices suts and it really transformed his system. We were both stunned as we listened to it break in over a weekend of non-stop listening.

I'd hazard to guess you had more than 2,000 hours in 13 years, but I'm thinking of myself.
I have limited cart experience; started with a benz gold (didn't enjoy it much), but with the great trade-in program they used(?) To have i soon went to a medium output woodbody benz. Loved it. Then when Lyra replaced the Helikon with the Kleos i jumped ship, and haven't missed much.
It seems to me that there's an entry "price for admission" as I've changed brands, and if that holds true in moving to Koetsu then itseems (to me) probable that without going to at least a Urushi it would only be a step sideways.
Bear in mind that the Kleos, when it first came out, was 2.5K. Now look at the price.
I'd like to state again how i appreciate the input. All of it. Ours can sometimes seem such a tiny, closed-off world.

Yikes!

@lewm, James, & Karl,
And everyone else for that matter-
This has all been enormously helpful.
I do not have the opportunity to audition hardly any of my purchases. And yet I've been very fortunate to have assembled good sounding systems by way of thorough research and "sound" judgment.
Thanks again