Phonostage pairing?

With the variety of cartridges you have, perhaps the Manley Steehead is the best choice as it offers flexibility, which you seem to enjoy, and from reviews I've read, excellent sound. It is number one on my wish list. Currently I run a Koetsu Urushi into a Krell KPE Reference at 100 Ohms into a KCT preamp with satisying, for the time being(!)results.

try a Thor it is high up there at 7.5K or so but I like it

Thanks very much for your thoughts,
These are not cartridges I already own, unfortunately - it's a pairing I'm still undecided over...
I have heard that Koetsu's can sound soft on the system I'm thinking of so it's still very much up in the air.
Had a word with those nice people at Whest Audio last night who mentioned there's a new reference MC model (balanced/unbalanced) due for release in Dec/Jan...
Might well be worth the wait..?

You may want to check out the new Artemis Phono stage. It comes in two versions MM and MC. There is a provison for easy change of resistor values for loading. This is a great sounding phono stage which IMHO is an excellent value.

Ho wabout EAR 324?Man I wish companies would get real and REALIZE that many arm manufacturers like say SME have swappable heads, VPI decks have swappable tubes etc.Why can' these many guys (including Whest) realizde we don't want to pop the freakin' tops of the case to get to DIPS and make a GOOD stage with front controls like the EAR 324,Aesthetix Rhea or Steelhead (All $4K to $7500) because sonme of us are not that well healed and woould like on MC,one MM, and maybe even another tube or head to hold a mono cart or a lesser one for beaters.But spend $500 to $5K of cash for a Cart.,anohter few hundred forthe head or tube,and then these units run $4K to $7500.Remeber the days before CD's when Mikro Seki or even bgi industrial companies like Kenwood made multi (2 or 3) arm decks.Pisses me off that to vary you wax playing you have to invest so much.Mark O'Brien at Rggue showed what he said was a a working mock up single imput box with frontload,cap,gain etc all for what he said he could sell for $1750.But so far no product.Meanwhile whereas it looks great in terms of features I hear the Rhea can have quality control issues.It's just not right that more manufacturers (Plinius has some contol on it's AGAIN $4500 box).Come on do we need to by 25 year old Counterpoint pre-amps (prior owner charges way to much to retor fit/fix them).So Koocho I empathasize moe than you know and wish you luck.
chazzbo