Which phono stage & cartridge combo?

What Rotel front end do you have? I was running a Grado Red cartridge / DIY op-amp (OPA2124) based phono stage / Rotel RA972 integrated and recently changed out preamps for a Rotel RC995 pre with built in phono stage. The latter sounds much much much better and more than half the differenece comes from the higher quality line stage. Something to keep in mind.

Rsross, I am trying to get decent two channel with my home theater at the moment and have the RSP-1066 and RMB-1075. The Krell Kav-400xi looks interesting to use with say a Denon receiver (AVR-3805). It has a theater pass through on it that bypasses the preamp section for use with home theater receiver. I may be upgrading to that so I can improve the two channel end of things in the near future.

I have decided on the Grado Sonata 1.5mv output (VPI edition)cartridge with the Grado PH-1 phono stage after a talk with John Chaipis at Grado. I believe Mr. Chaipis is the head of engineering at Grado and had quite a bit of input in the design of the current series of cartridges. I hope I'll be happy with the choice.

It would have been great if more Audiogoner's had more experience with these combo's to give their input. I'll let you know how it works out.

I have to say I love these cartridges, and these cartridges love unipivots! But I find the Grados perform best on low-mass tonearms (the best results I ever got was with the ultra-low-mass Black Widow), where the infamous Grado Wiggle completely disappears. But they still sound great on medium-mass unipivots. You'll love it, if you love gorgeous midranges. And contrary to a lot of comment, I find both the high and low-frequencies quite good when the Grado is matched to a sympathetic arm. The Grados do things that remind me of tube equipment, and I believe, anyway, that it takes tube equipment to hear what the Grados have to offer: which is unmatched retrieval of such things as instrumental decay and resonance, due to its very clean sound, due in turn to the lack of resonances of its wooden case and potting. I use a high-output Grado Platinum (all the names confuse me) into my tubed ASL Mini Phono, and it definitely does not overload the preamp, which is also somewhere around 40db. A high-output Grado, while likely slightly less refined than a low-output versison, will also have more dynamics and power. And the high-output version is no slouch at information retrieval. Good luck whichever way you go.