I just had an opportunity to demo a (well broken in) Sutherland 20/20 that a friend loaned me while I was waiting for a Manley Chinook to arrive. The 20/20 was a nice step up from several phono stages around the 1k mark (Heed Quasar, Sutherland Ph3D, Croft RIAA Phono). It had more detail and better decay and high frequency extension. However, the Chinook was a gargantuan leap forward (in my system, of course). Yes, the sound stage was much bigger, the details were more natural, and the bass depth was better, but most importantly I stopped thinking about the sonic characteristics of the phono amp and started thinking about music. The Chinook was the single biggest improvement I've made to my system.
question about ss or tubes
So right now the sound I'm getting is wonderfully enveloping and fills my little space up with the music. The music has reasonable amount of depth it images beyond the edges of the speakers and sometimes sound comes from behind me or right next to me. However I know I'm missing some detail and it has me contemplating a phono stage and I'm just wondering would I lose what I have going to solid state in order to get detail or is it possible to keep this spacious floating sort of presentation with something like a Sutherland 20/20 for example. On a side note I'm getting some new power tubes for my amps so I think this should help with my detail but my question is still does solid state do this sort of presentation or is not a ss or tube question at all but a system room synergy thing that causes this.