Voltage mode vs current mode phono stages

Yes, the Grail is a very under-exposed amp.  I have had the SE for two years having auditioned it at home for three months against two other similarly priced units (COVID prevented the dealer taking it back).

There are three Grails.  SE is the middle one, perhaps a bit more towards the flagship than the base.  It can run single ended or balanced.  I run balanced from cartridge to power amp.

Grail has a good claim to be in the best sounding group of phono amps.  It manages to combine a near clinical accuracy with a musical presentation, which is rare in phono amps; one usually has to favour one or the other - as others have stated, warm or lean.

I won't be replacing it.

Yes it was the Boulder 1008.  I really didn't like it.  It sounded very 'transistory'.  I didn't move on to the 2008 mainly because of the price, but I felt it likely there would be a house sound that doesn't suit me.

I have Ortofons A90, Anna, Verismo; van den Huls Grasshoppers II and IV and Colibri.  Also Audio Technica ART1000, another sleeper, uses entirely difference suspension engineering.  These are all low impedence, between 3 - 7 ohms, the ART1000 is only 3 ohm, save the Colibri XGP which is 36 ohm.  I do not hear any artifacts that distinguish that but overall these vdHs have fallen behind a little.  The ART and the Verismo are the best I have.  Anna has a high mass that unfortunately doesn't suit my ultra low mass parallel tracking arm, so I use it in my second system where the amplification is vintage.

@drbond 

Firstly my Grail is the SB, not SE, sorry.  I have had it about two years.

The model range is Grail, entry.  SB, separate power supply on umbilical, but same amplification circuitry.  SE, separate supply for each channel.  SE+, some selected components.  SB and SE can be run balanced or single-ended but input and output must be the same mode.  One might have presumed the SE is single-ended and SB balanced.  Not so.

The reading of the literature you mention is a mis-reading.  In the vdH specs it is stated that the current operation provides automatic matching for cartridges in the 40-400 ohms.  On the SE and SB there is the additional possibility of changing the capacitance by hard-wiring capacitors into the back of an XLR socket.  vdH suggests this might be done in the case of moving magnet cartridges but doesn't see the need on moving coils.

I have listened to a wide range of top-end MC cartridges on the SB and it works well with all of them.  It is priced at c.£14k in the UK, but I believe cheaper in the US.  In my estimation it is at least a match for amps selling at double that.  For instance I tried the Boulder and found that to be dry and over-clinical, analytic rather than musical compared with the SB.  I found it noticeably better than the AR Ref 3 and lesser ARs.