What is the Phono stage you have finished with?

I have dealt with Whest Audio personally, and I can say that they not only make fine phono stage products, but they are a fine company to deal with. Their customer service is very good. I have a Whest PS30RDT and I would describe it as having a "sweet" sound. Admittedly, this is a very inarticulate description but it produces a somewhat unconstrained sound and a nice 3-dimensional soundstage.

Let me say that you have to be very careful when comparing phono stages because you rarely get an apples-to-apples comparison. There are differences in gain (even for what are supposed to be comparable settings) and differences in load resistor values - each of these can affect the sound of the unit in your system.

The casework for the Whest PS.30RDT SE is in black but the standard casework for the PS.30RDT is silver. You can get Whest to provide a PS.30RDT in black for an extra charge (which is what I did). The cheesy photos of the PS.30RDT SE on the Whest Audio website do not do justice to the appearance of the black casework actually looks much better than it appears in the Whest photos. In general, I think that Whest would serve themselves if they put some effort into improving the appearance of their website.

If I understand the comments by Rauliruegas, and repeated by Notec and Atmasphere, the theory is that a phono stage that is integrated into the preamplifier is better than one that is separate because the interconnection forms a kind of "weak link". This statement sound generally incorrect. Keep in mind that the signal output from the phono stage should be about as strong as the signal output from a CD player or tuner. I mean, the point of the phono stage is to take a signal that is too weak to be input to the preamplifier (i.e. the signal from the cartridge) and amplify it to a level that is suitable for the preamplifier (there is, of course also the task of RIAA equalization as well). If the signal from the phono stage is weaker, then you probably have a problem of too low a gain level in the phono stage.

An advantage in having the phono stage separate from the preamplifier is that the phono stage is typically the highest gain component in your system, and it receives signals that are significantly weaker than those elsewhere in the system. Those weak signals are prone to interference from nearby stronger signals, so by keeping those signals in a separate box, you can amplify the weak signal while minimizing interference and then once the signal has been amplified, it can then be introduced into the rest of the system.