I've had good results with inexpensive Ortofon, expensive Ortofon, Denon AU320, Fidelity Research, and Cotter. No hum problems with any of them. Their fidelity is relative, but even the cheap Ortofon was more acceptable than some noisy active step-ups. Really isolates the phono stage...
What's a good step-up transformer?
Everyone says how moving coils are so much better than moving magnets, but what they don't metion is that the signal is so much smaller you need a step up transformer to run it with most phonostages. I'm wondering what a good one might be. Audio Note seems to have the market cornered but they are not cheap.