Natural, musical, dynamic phono preamp 700 used

Great, I thought I had reached my decision and was going to go with the GCPH. No it sucks and I would need to spend another 4-500 to modify it?

Do the experts here concur or is this gentleman mistaken in his assessment of the GCPH?

I have a cheap ART DJ II that is a great deal but I never intended to keep it long term. I have the same budget as Jeremy72 and am looking forward to hearing a better stage in my system.

If gear makes a difference in stage selection, I have the following:
MH 7.1 w/Goldring 2400
Rogue Cronus Magnum Integrated Amp
Energy RC10 speakers

I do not like harsh clinical sounding gear. In the future, I may upgrade my cartridge to an Ortofon 2M Black, Nagaoka MP-500 or something else you guys might suggest in the $5-700 range.

One thing I do like about the Art is the adjustable gain. I use it every time I play an album to get the best output from the stage.

Maybe adjustable gain is not as big a deal as I think in a nicer stage like the ones being discussed here.

So, is it:
GCPH
Dynavector
JD9
or something else?

Hope this is not a hijack Jeremy as we are talking about the same thing.

This is a good topic and one that am very interested in. Let's get back to the subject of $500-$700 phono stages.

Based on what I posted above, would a JD9, GCPH or something else be a better choice? I'd like to have variable gain control but don't want to buy the wrong stage just to get that feature.

I'm up for mods later on but want it to sound good out of the box. Is the stock GCPH that bad?

Stupid question, do the Jolida, GCPH, Shindo and others require a linestage or can they be run directly into an integrated amp?