VAC Owners:Outboard Phono Stage?

Good for you, Alonski. It's nice to hear about someone enjoying their gear, instead of worrying about it, bitching about it, or talking about replacing it (which are three popular topics on most of these audio chat boards).
Enjoy~

Gang: I have had the Steelhead for 5-6 years, bought it new, never liked it straight in, and with the Lamm Reference line stage, it made pretty good music, using NOS Teles and rolling the 7044 tubes as well. There is a noise in my Lamm Reference, and it has to go back to Vlad (no big deal, i am still in NYC area, so it is a drive, no shipping). But since Vlad is away (Munich, i gather, not the Motherland), I'm down to the Steelhead for a month or so, straight in again, and it sounds too 'high fi' for me. So, I'm looking for something that will give me purity and openness via the Lamm ML2/Avantgarde Duo combo.
Considering, among others, the Allnic stuff, as well as Veloce line stage with ? phono.
I'm vinyl only. And i don't need a bunch of other inputs on the linestage.
Spoke to Israel at Coincident as well-
Frankly, I trust my own ears, in my own system, not the flavor of the month or technical explanations (which are fine as far as they go). My take, living with the Steelhead, it is good, and very flexible, well built, but sounds too electronic (FET's?) for my taste, and without the linestage to buffer it, literally and figuratively, it will be offered for sale soon.
What say you?
TIA.

I have been following this thread with interest- since a Steelhead was mentioned earlier, and I just switched from that to the Allnic h3000. It is far too early in the process to make any concrete judgments, but the Allnic seems to sound far less compressed than the Steelhead. It does need to break-in though, which is one of the reasons for my hestitation in providing a glowing review. The other variable in my system, my line stage, is temporarily in a holding pattern- a Lamm Reference line stage, which is making all sorts of nasty noise, and obviously needs to be fixed. I substituted a Joule LA 150mkII, which, frankly, is far too lush in combination with the ML2 amps (the Joule might be the ticket for someone with big solid state amps of the analytic variety).
The other interesting thing is that the Steelhead really only sounded great through the MM inputs, rather than the step up transformers- through the transformers, it exhibited some unevenness across the spectrum. The Allnic doesn't seem to behave that way at all.
Oh, and the Allnic is pretty gorgeous, if you are a gearhead. :)

KAB makes an inexpensive RIAA adapter that enables you to plug a CD player's output into the phono stage input to burn in the latter. I don't think it presents the same safety risk that Almarg described by using a 'burn-in' CD alone. I used the KAB device recently to burn in my new phono stage and had no issues. Almarg- think that's safer?

Props to Albert Porter for turning me on to the KAB device. I knew they existed, but he zero'd in on that one, the company is reliable, and you can get the device quickly.
As to Alonski's questions, I can only offer my own experience:
1. Yes, there are benefits to using the balanced connectors even if everything in the chain is not fully balanced. I also like the firm connection made by XLRs. Whether you can hear a difference, I don't know. I have identical lengths of the same cable terminated both ways, but have not bothered to compare on the stretch between my phono stage and line stage.
2. My assumption on separate power supplies was that they were made separate for a reason. I don't know that you have to go to the length of hiding it, but I think power supplies have the potential to throw off a lot of garbage, and getting them isolated from low level audio signals is beneficial. Having said that, I had the tube power supply to my old line stage separated by one rack shelf and it was fine. The 'stacking' thing you see in photos is likely the same thing as having a blonde as a hood ornament on the car- you wouldn't drive it that way. :)
3. When the designer of the Veloce line stage was at my house, we tried the caps on the RCAs and it didn't make a difference on my set-up. Not that it wouldn't on another...

I think it was Pierre Laval, a pretty famous judge, who said "It's nice to be on the cutting edge as long as you're not the salami." I'm glad you have a sense of humor about all this Alonski, because this kind of issue - model changes and new 'ultimate' products-typical of some manufacturers (not VAC as far as I know) - make some hobbyists nuts.
Since in many cases, I haven't bought the 'latest' model, but have taken advantage of such changes in a manfacturer's line-up to buy the superceded model, used, this has not driven me to distraction. And, I think some manufacturers- not all- offer upgrade programs for loyal customers.
In your case, I doubt this new Statement preamp will be available soon anyway, even if that's what you wanted. (Perhaps I'm wrong, but the time lag from first announcement to actual delivery can sometimes be considerable).
So, enjoy your new preamp. When you are ready, upgrade if that's what you want.
In my experience, though I'm not suggesting that it will be the case here, sometimes the newer product isn't necessarily better or more musical anyway.