I am in the same situation. I will probably build my own with a tube rectifier power supply putting about 300 Volts through 100K loading resistors to the plates of a 6SN7 in two stages of amplification and a passive RIAA resistor capacitor network on the output and some 0.33 blocking capacitors to the preamp. I am not willing to accept the expense of MC cartridges which when they stylus is worn out you have to replace the whole cartridge and I don't want to deal with lead in wires to moving coils fatigue fracturing from too many hours of flexing with the vibrations of the moving coils. I am using a red Ortofon MM cartridge. It will be loaded with 0.1 mF and a 47K resistor. I have had good luck in the past
A cheap Chinese tube phono preamp sounds dead like the speakers are wrapped in pillows so it has to go.
I have been designing and building my own preamps and amps for over two decades and this gives me more freedom to use such things as polypropylene filter capacitors in my power supplies rather than have the inferior electrolytic capacitors I see in the power supplies of amps costing tens of thousands of dollars.
A cheap Chinese tube phono preamp sounds dead like the speakers are wrapped in pillows so it has to go.
I have been designing and building my own preamps and amps for over two decades and this gives me more freedom to use such things as polypropylene filter capacitors in my power supplies rather than have the inferior electrolytic capacitors I see in the power supplies of amps costing tens of thousands of dollars.