Phono stages belong to which tier?

I'm been running the Wavestream Kinetics phono stage and preamp for over a year and IMHO it is excellent. I ran a latest (at the time) Aesthetix Callisto and Io Signature each with two power supplies, NOS tubes, before changing to the Wavestream. I listen to mainly jazz, classical and a lot of female vocals. The Wavestream and the Aesthetix had more than enough gain for my moving coil. After a week home demo with the Wavestream in my system I like it better. I thought my Aesthetix gear was great but it had a slightly euphoric presentation and was a little plumier in the upper bass than the Wavestream combo. The Wavestream seemed slightly more netural and more like live music I hear on the weekends. There's no question that Jim White's Aesthetix products are wonderfull and you may like these better than Wavestream's combo. You can't go wrong with either. I think that both are in top 5 phono stages.

John Curl is being John Curl, that's a positive, ringing out the best performance possible before he'll release it for production. It should good! You'll notice that his designs are SOTA but also remain that way for years without rev after rev. I'm really looking forward to getting one.