Interesting. I also lost most of my LP collection (in 1979) to a flood.
After 3 years with a Cambridge 640P I upgraded 3/11 to the Jolida JD9A. I happened to have some NOS Sylvania Gold 5751s and replaced the stock 12AX7s with those. I also put Herbies tube dampers on them, placed Vibrapods under the feet, and swapped in a Zu BoK power cord. I'm really happy with this preamp. As some have pointed out to me, the tubes in this preamp power the buffer stage. Gain is supplied by op amps. Even so, the phono stage is on a full-sized chassis and has a nice big power supply compared to the wall warts that often accompany phono stages in this price range. Furthermore, possibly the best feature of the JD9A is its high level of configurability, with three gain levels, two output levels, and a wide range of capacitance settings for MM/MI carts and resistance settings for MC carts.
Now, if you liked the Rega MM cart better than the MC but still want an improvement, upgrade to an Audio Technica AT150MLX. This cart is *easily* the equal of the Rega Exact, but is available for less (check lpgear.com) and has a replaceable stylus. Set the capacitance on the JD9A to 147 pF for this cart and you're good to go.
After 3 years with a Cambridge 640P I upgraded 3/11 to the Jolida JD9A. I happened to have some NOS Sylvania Gold 5751s and replaced the stock 12AX7s with those. I also put Herbies tube dampers on them, placed Vibrapods under the feet, and swapped in a Zu BoK power cord. I'm really happy with this preamp. As some have pointed out to me, the tubes in this preamp power the buffer stage. Gain is supplied by op amps. Even so, the phono stage is on a full-sized chassis and has a nice big power supply compared to the wall warts that often accompany phono stages in this price range. Furthermore, possibly the best feature of the JD9A is its high level of configurability, with three gain levels, two output levels, and a wide range of capacitance settings for MM/MI carts and resistance settings for MC carts.
Now, if you liked the Rega MM cart better than the MC but still want an improvement, upgrade to an Audio Technica AT150MLX. This cart is *easily* the equal of the Rega Exact, but is available for less (check lpgear.com) and has a replaceable stylus. Set the capacitance on the JD9A to 147 pF for this cart and you're good to go.