What's A Good Upgrade From A Manley Steelhead?

Wish I’d heard a Steelhead - almost bought a used one last year. What do you want to hear from its replacement? More detail & transparency? More warmth and body? More dynamic sound? All of that? (that’s hard to pull off lol).

• Herron VTPH-2A - This one doesn’t add warmth. It’s very clean & cool / neutral-ish in character. Not very tubey. I honestly don’t dig it on my Tannoys, where I desire more meat on the bones. BUT it’s proving a great partner for my Stax 009 / T2 rig - the T2 amp already provides all the necessary lushness on its own, and the Herron’s clean sound slots in well here.
• Hagerman Trumpet MC - Ridiculously cheap for how enjoyable it is to me. Gobs of warmth and body, lush midrange - honestly feels like it has a mild bass boost. Very tubey sound with an large & open soundstage. Responds well to NOS tube rolling. Works well with anything. This is literally the best I’ve heard my Benz LPS.
• VAC Renaissance SE - Classic upper-echelon VAC sound: very good resolution and dynamics, absolutely gorgeous midrange (natural, organic). VAC makes one hell of a phono stage, especially this 6-tube version. Neutral-ish when using the onboard Lundahl SUT. Not a huge fan of the Lundahls, honestly. You can get a more meaty sound bypassing them and using an outboard SUT (Koetsu, EAR, Bob’s Devices). Which I do!
• ARC Reference 3SE - OMG this stage is so good. It was my best overall phono stage, and I sold it (lol). Only because I went with huge VAC 300 Watt monos, and then the Master preamp matched best with those, and the Ref 3SE didn’t gel so well with the Master pre, for some unknown reason. I’m a particularly huge fan of its MM (low gain) mode. I still preferred my own outboard SUTs over its MC / JFET stage, but it was also very good! It is the cleanest, most linear phono stage with top marks in dynamics, detail, transparency, good body, and a touch of sweetness. Why did I sell this (oh yeah - I also needed the funds to afford the monoblocks). Perhaps surprisingly, the monoblocks made a much bigger difference in the overall system performance. 

I just don’t feel like I get as much mileage (as in, a wide variance in resultant SQ) from rolling 6DJ8 / 6922, as opposed to say 12AX7 / 12AU7 / 6SN7 or even KT / EL power tubes. Maybe that will change in the future. I’ve tried a lot of them, but no CCA’s or pinched-waists yet. You do have to be careful of "duds", but Brent Jesse will get you good ones.

Certainly, some phono stages are more friendly to tube rolling than others. The VAC’s are beautifully voiced with stock tubes, so you have to be careful not to stray from that balance, which is tricky. I had put in some RCA blue-tips (from VTS) in there that sounded just AWFUL (bright, harsh mess) and didn’t "figure out" that I should blame that tube for way too long. I was so sure it would be a good tube.

Like @tomic601 I find the Herron a bit tricky to roll - funny, I currently have the EXACT same Mazda silver plate 12AX7 (best of this type, IMO) in it that he mentioned! I like generally warmer stages, but the Herron is just not going to be swayed there and so I found it best rather to maximize its strengths with the Mazdas. I don’t have a lot of 12AT7 to roll for those 3 slots. I tried British Mullards from Upscale (usually very warm) and didn’t find much improvement over the stock tubes.

The ARC Ref 3 doesn’t have as many options as most tube stages. There are a couple options that I didn’t explore: 6H30 "DR" (very expensive, hard to find matched) and 6N6 (supposedly these will wear out faster in this application). You can roll the single 6550 regulator tube, to some positive effect. Anyways, this is a great stage that’s voiced right so you "shouldn’t" really feel the need to roll. It you want to hack its sound, then using an outboard SUT (like I did) has far greater impact.

The Hagerman Trumpet MC ships with Russian Mullards that are too warm and you can literally only go up from there lol. At this price point ($1289), it’s impressive to get even the 6 Russian tubes included.

In general, phono stage rolling is a lot harder - you will run into noisy, microphonic tubes. Just listen and move on as needed. Also - perhaps this should be obvious - the choice of phono stage is going to make far more impact on the resultant sound than your choice in tubes. You're not going to make one of these phonos sound "just like" the other with rolling.